What if the symbols in our dreams aren’t trying to teach us something new, but to return something we once gave away? In this reflective essay, a vivid dream of a parrot by the Copenhagen lakes becomes a lens for exploring how memory, longing, and imagination intertwine. Through the figure of the bird - bright, strutting, and gently impossible - we encounter the shift from idealisation to integration, from projection to creative agency.
This is not a story about escape, but about return. To a place, a voice, a self that no longer needs to reach outward to be in dialogue. The dream becomes a quiet map - a philosophical artefact - for those navigating complex relationships with memory, art, and the creatures that guide us.
After graduating with First-Class Honours from Wimbledon School of Art and completing an MA at Kingston University’s Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Camilla Howalt (b.1968) established her Malmö-based studio in 2021. Her practice focuses on creating prints and original artworks that blend photography, painting, and digital techniques.
Working across painting, textile-based media, and photography to explore perception, materiality, and fragmentation, her work traces the ways pain - physical, emotional, existential - inscribes itself onto surfaces, bodies, and spaces. Through mapped and layered textures, she investigates how presence unfolds in the tension between sensuality, introspection, and abstraction.
Camilla’s work is part of private collections across Europe, and her prints are available for purchase, bringing her distinct, contemplative style into homes and spaces looking for both aesthetic and thoughtful engagement.
