Secret Messages in my Railway Tunnel Paintings and the Tumbledown Barn

In my early twenties, I painted two landscapes — a railway tunnel and a derelict barn. Decades later, after recovering the truth about my toddlerhood, I realised these paintings contained secret messages from my subconscious.”

In the summer of 1985, I produced alfresco oil paintings of a railway tunnel for my degree year at City University. In the summer of 1986, I produced on site oil paintings of a tumbledown barn in a barley field.

Clues in My Paintings Exposed My Buried Trauma

In both instances, I felt something was missing. In the case of the railway tunnel, I placed a dead tree over a gate located at the tunnel mouth. In the case of the tumbledown barn, I placed a plank over the doorway.

I experienced a ‘click’ in my head after adding these elements.

During both summers, I suffered terrible depression, intrusive thoughts and disturbed nights. I was also working on a novel, The Lessons (originally titled The Upstairs Room). A burning fantasy world consumed my days fuelling my story. The central character was a thug called Aidan. I thought he was a childhood familiar.

Whilst painting at the barn, I suffered agonizing period pains for 3 months in a row. This is unusual for me. No period pain was reported whilst I was painting at the railway bridge, as I was on the pill. The pill is known to curtail period pain.

 

Symbols in the Landscape Unseen for Thirty Years

 For 30 years, my oil paintings remained in the garage and sadly sustained some water damage. I seldom thought of them.

In 2016, I discovered an uncle who lived with us in 1968 took my toddlerhood away. The full story is given in a 10-part article.

Disturbed symbols of the tunnel, bridge and gate. Taken from my book, Mirror Image Shattered.

My terrible unearthing caused me to examine my novels, diaries and artwork. I am horrified to find rape symbols within my landscape paintings. The drawings of the dead tree and the distorted gate appear to enter the tunnel. I completed these drawings in the autumn of 1985 and would produce charcoal drawings from them.

The symbol of the tree and tunnel

 

The Truth About My Lost Toddlerhood behind my Paintings

See also my painting of the dead tree. Notice the branches straddling the gate. Notice also my placing of the dead tree at the mouth of the tunnel. I have provided a reconstruction of the location of the dead tree in relation to the tunnel. I often sat beneath that tunnel sketching the dead tree. A year later, I would give the same treatment to the doorway of a barn. I placed a large plank at the doorway. I believed I was simply improving the composition by breaking up the sky. I suffered crippling period pain, depression and grief throughout that summer whilst painting there.

I blamed these sensations upon the wrong things. The grief was in fact due to the loss of my childhood. The period pain is due to subconscious reminders of the sensation of toddlerhood. How astonishing I would experience such symptoms of PTSD due to my creation of a trauma symbol in the landscape!

Plank at the Doorway of an old barn

Secret Messages from my Toddlerhood

On 23 November 1986, I would hang a painting of the barn door and plank in my bedroom. That night in my diary, I report of a horrid dream. I also experience a nasty sensation of falling asleep with noises in my head. At this time, I was reading Colleen McCullough’s The Thornbirds. Mary Carson’s dead body plagued with flies disturbed me. I was also tormented by the face-hugger in Aliens which I watched that summer. This is because my uncle routinely suffocated me in my bedroom before assaulting me. Certain imagery triggered me.

Painting of the barn hung in my bedroom spurring troubled nights.

My Trauma Art on my Wall

What I hadn’t realized was that I had produced other oil paintings depicting innocence lost, prior to these landscape paintings. The subject matter is still life (covered in a separate article). All these paintings are like pieces to a jigsaw. In isolation they make no sense, but together, a pattern emerges.

The devastation of this unearthing is indescribable. My life has been torn apart and the foundations of my life are destroyed. Worse, I discover that my fictional character Aidan of my novel The Lessons was in fact sourced from my uncle. My childhood familiar wore a face based upon Mum's brother. He was not a childhood familiar at all.

Once the dust settles, I dare to revisit the sites of my alfresco oil paintings.

Connections Between my Artwork

I didn’t know in 1985 and 1986 that my paintings were documenting a trauma I had buried since toddlerhood. Only decades later, when the memory resurfaced, did the dead tree, the plank, and the grief finally make sense.

What I find at the railway tunnel and the barn 3 decades later is unsettling and unexpected.

Further Reading about my Alfresco Paintings

You can revisit the hidden message behind the railway tunnel, explore the hidden message behind the barn painting, and follow my return to the railway tunnel 32 years later. You can also read about my visit to the derelict barn 31 years later, where the symbolism behind these landscape settings becomes clearer.

Discover More on this Blog

You can explore Home and About this blog, or read About Me for background. If you’re new to my research, the Start here page introduces the prologue and the ten‑part series explaining how I learned the truth about my past. You can also buy my books or browse the full Madeleine Watson Book Catalogue, and visit Themes in My Work to see how each strand connects. To understand the diary foundations behind my research, you can explore About my diaries, where the earliest clues to my toddlerhood first emerged.