Kevin Coffey’s Art Gallery
Kingdom of Dreams Key Concepts & Illustrations:
Kingdom of Dreams Illustrations:
This is the story's foundational piece and central idea when our protagonist’s imaginary friend takes possession of the family vacuum cleaner and sends him on an incredible quest to the Kingdom of Dreams. Which leads to the subsequent book cover below:
This is one of my favorite drawings, alongside the foundational piece. It depicts the dreaded Nightmare Carousel, a terrifying not-so-merry-go-round with live nightmares bound to the poles of the rotating platform. Our protagonist must survive this frightful and dangerous ride to win the day.
Vacuum cleaners aren’t the only thing our protagonist’s imaginary friend can possess. It turns out bullies are terrified when rusty old swingsets start moving on their own, complete with the sounds of invisible children screaming with glee.
To his great shock and dismay, our protagonist’s bed is revealed as the portal to the Kingdom of Dreams.
The Portal is first discovered when the children’s dog chases their cat beneath the covers and both disappear as the covers flatten…
A magical talisman in the story—when traveling by water or air—is a leafboat, a fallen leaf that grows large enough to transport our hero and his family.
Our protagonist suffers from horrible recurring nightmares, the worst one being the antagonist of the story, a ghastly Night Terror that terrorizes him throughout his adventure up until the final act.
Another of our protagonist’s recurring Night Terrors, but perhaps the most cruel and annoyingly persistent, is the Lurking. The Lurking is an invisible fiend and assumes the form of the worst weather imaginable. Only a trip to its dust storm-protected badlands, scaling up on a treacherous ledge to its perilous throne of teeth can defeat it. I photographed a fiendish cloud with multiple faces that became the Lurking you see here.
I had the most wonderful real-life model for this illustration, a cat that actually sits in chairs in just this posture! (Thank you, Mimi, for allowing me to follow stalk her for the day.) In the story, Francis the cat is terrible at poetry but is completely unaware of it. When he has a literal captive audience, he lets the phrases flow.
Older siblings can be the worst. But when they turn into a Night Terror, complete with an obnoxious nose ring they always wanted? Watch out!
Equally bad is being hunted by an eerie saltwater tribe that follows the troublesome older sibling…
We all hate to be judged, but in the Kingdom of Dreams, it’s a safeguard against letting bad seeds just waltz into the more sensitive parts of the realm. This bridge can tell if you’ve been naughty or nice…