To me, creating surreal images means more freedom - a way to express the perception of reality, or fantasies, in a more personal way. There are fewer rules to follow and as such one can create more freely.
There is less right or wrong, thus surreal imagery can be more liberating both for the viewer and the artist.

Ok, the answer is not so easy...
And in the doubt of only one, i give you three:

1. Nothing
2. Falling stars
3. Secret

I couldnt answer because I am a fish, I know nothing about water.

Surrealism for me is gate to another worlds, which surprised me all time. It is not invention for me, it is true and I see this fantastic and amazing worlds.
And I am happy I am an artist and can materialize these worlds in my pictures.

Ser surrealista es complicarse indefinida e involutariamente la vida con pensamientos y asuntos enrevesados (habitualmente incompresibles o de poca utilidad para la mayoría de la gente) que casi siempre no conducen a la "supuesta parte adecuada" pero acabas en un lugar único donde siempre encuentras algo más (que esa mayoría de gente se pierde para siempre jamás). Es seguir al conejo blanco y pasar por todas las puertas de atrás.

To be a Surrealist has something to do with getting older while still remain a child inside, a child that never fears to express himself in the innocent way he dreams. To be able to let your ideas and your imagination free, not to worry about what peoples say about this or that, about how a character or a landscape looks, about how the lights and the shadows should be and so on. To be able to set your imagination free from all the chanis of rationality and let your dreams and visions be your inspiration and to create your work based on that, not to try to transpose your dreams into something that has to be rational, let them be what they are dreams, fantasy or visions from a world where rationality has no power at all.

It's combination of fears, dreams, real life, memories, nightmares, premonitions, doubts...

In essence, this is the presence of post modern society and post pop and post dada. We can call it the Heidegger time concept where everything can be exchanged based on the reciprocity of time and existence. At least for me, it can be interpreted this way. Following this logic, the mark we leave starts from the past, scratches the future as going through he present. The importance is the actuality of making the mark. The time which is proven by numerous covered signs. In other words, it is the happening:
Simply interactive points on the Net

Una cosa es ser surrealista y otra pintar surrealismo.
Para mi ser surrealista es no serlo y que lo sean todos los demás, de esta manera me inspiran a crear mi pintura surrealista. Interpretando la realidad a través del subconsciente.

To be a surrealist and a visionary artist to me is to be a continuous seeker of visions, this visions comes from my dreams, meditations, mediumistic experiences and other conscious altered states… In a few words is to see what can not be seen and make it visible to everyone through a plastic medium.

The life is surreal and I am a painter. So it´s just possible to make surreal paintings.

What if, one day my hands did not grow again, as they do every morning? What if, one evening, I no longer were a dreambuilder?

Sorry - I am too swamped with work and other projects (finishing new book "Inner paths to outer space" and working on the next one) to help you at this time. Good luck with your project!.

Sei que o mundo esta louco como os ventos sem direcões e mais sem direções são as mentes sem escrupulos que regem este mundo. No mais resta me criar oque e inconcebido, para mim concebido normal para outros mais um louco nomundo.

I see it as a way of expressing myself, convictions, etc, without being limited by conventions,.. some of my works are also personal, in a sense it could describe events in my life also. Like Picasso said "Writers write words on pages in a journal, me, I paint canvases".
It gives me the opportunity to do whatever I want including defying the laws of gravity, logic, etc... it permits me to express myself like I said in a way that it is not evident at first sight. I do have some paintings that would probably not be easy for a common viewer to see the meaning unless I give it a clue in the title... not all though..

Surrealism itself can be many things I suppose...anything that does not fall into conventional existing artistic codification to some degree could be considered surreal. In this I feel a degree of freedom as an artist to not worry about fulfilling any expectation...self imposed or otherwise.
Actually, I'm not sure if I could be considered a true surrealist in the traditional since...but for me it has become a combination of archetypal representation and imagination, a catharsis, a psychic translation, a meditation, a reflection of life's irony and at times a vacation.

Surrealism for me is simply a philosophy of rationalism.

Tapping into the unconscious to reveal a greater truth.

Penso que ser surrealista é uma questão de estado de espirito. Um estado de devaneio da mente humana, uma fantasia que atenua as impressões da realidade dura e intransponivel. Uma crença que absolve todos os "pecados da insensates humana". Uma pré-disposição que eleva a materialidade humana aos cumes das sensações lúdicas e espirituais. Abrir-se às mais elevadas liberdades do "sentir" humano. Uma pré-disposição para abolir tudo que está posto como inexorável e imutável.
"Nos sonhos, as portas se abrem semelhantes a sóis incandescentes de realidade pura e duradoura". Nos sonhos, a poesia lembra de tempos perdidos e enterrados na terra dura do esquecimento humano.
"E quando tudo se perdeu, e os temporais do norte arrastaram toda esperança, e toda luz, e toda infância, e tudo chegou ao ponto zero da criação humana, eis que, na escuridão dos nossos dias, brilha uma chama que se eleva acima do nada criado diariamente, e a luz se fez... nesse momento estavamos sonhando...

Artist qui a un art transcendant et comuniquant avec le subconscient, il depasse le reel , il detourne le réel, il ne s'appuis pas sur le réel pour créer mais sur sur ce qui es au delas du réel , il est parfois peux etre un visionnaire amicalemnt.

To be a surrealist meens for me tohave a great fantasie. You can make pictures or films in your brain so fantastic as it will be like a dream.
And with this fantasie you make pictures, poems or films. Surrealistik art. So Dali has done. But don't be a surrealist in your real live.This is dangerous. In live you have to be a hard realist.

To be a surrealist, for me at the moment, seems to be in a position of constant opposition to most of the things in the world, to be discontent, to be angry at all the attempts of those in power, who seek to control our lives, our perceptions and our thoughts, to keep is all on the surface of reality, like water-boatmen, pretending to us that there is nothing below the meniscus, and that our dreams have no substance.

For me, to be surrrealist is to listen to your inside dreams and to make pictures with the sound of these silent stories...

We are asked to believe in God but what does God believe in?
If what we are told about Him is true, He can only believe in Himself, and this self-belief presumably provided the immanent force for our creation leading one to suggest that our Creator's self-confidence was misplaced.
Those who believe that God created Man in his own image and likeness are the ones who have the least reason to believe in Him.
If the result of God's belief in Himself is us then we have have every right to question His faith.... and our own.
The test of faith is not belief in God but belief in oneself where created and Creator meet.
Surrealism is the excuse God used to invent reality.

Surrealism for me is gate to another worlds, which surprised me all time. It is not invention for me, it is true and I see this fantastic and amazing worlds.
And I am happy I am an artist and can materialize these worlds in my pictures.

I'm a realist and this is what my reality look like.

To be a Surrealist is to have a unique privilege. The privilege of Liberty, absolute Liberty.
The Liberty to create other Worlds, and the Liberty to share them.
To be a Surrealist is to have the ability to reinvent the present, To reinvent beauty, to play with the human soul, to create other dimension, to see farther, to see differently, to have a unique, yet universal vision on things, a vision that can bring together and unite sensible beings. To be a Surrealist is to be able to touch people deep in their subconscience,to touch their unspoken Hopes and their Hidden Dreams.
I consider myself to be an outcast Humanist, a latter day Symbolist and Surrealist....

I actually consider myself a magic realist rather than a surrealist because my work, although it appears surrealistic, is neither dream-based nor unstructured. And although I concede the germ of the idea for a given painting might have a subconscious component, I’m actually quite analytical in the development and execution of the piece (no doubt symptomatic of my previous experience as an engineer). This reliance on my rational mind combined with the narrative quality of the work suggests the term “Magic Realism” would be a more accurate classification.
Still, like surrealists I work within the basic framework of realism, with recognizable subject matter and the fundamental goal of making a 2-D surface look 3-D in a convincing way. But at the same time I transcend the limitations of realism, letting my imagination run rampant. I bend physical laws. I distort shapes and sizes. I combine disparate elements. I create improbable juxtapositions. This gives me greater capacity to articulate a particular idea and to create the desired visual and emotional atmosphere.
It is a great joy.

What does being a surrealist mean to me? Perhaps the better question is: what being an artist means to me? It is a privilege and an obligation. I believe that as an artist I’m able to see more than others which obliges me to work on conveying my vision to others. And my vision happens to be surrealist.
Surrealists unite!

To be surrealist is think that the dreams are not only more beautiful than the objective world, but also more genuine!

The boundaries of the imagination and non sequitur has no limit and occur when you been looking at to many secateurs in life.
Give me the element of surprise and the unexpected, but not the mundane.

I would have to say being a surrealist is the everthing to me.I get the highest form of satifaction and pride out of painting something from out of my head.
I had stepped away from it for a few years painting my granchildren dancing in the our Native Big House "WawaDit'la and even though I got much satisfaction from learning a new way to paint, I did not get the big reward at the end of that jouney like the ones that come from my head. Just knowing that know one else could come up with it , is a reward in itself.
So that is what I feel about Sureslism. I hope I have answered it well. Have a wonderful day....

I think all that I can say is, whatever I do, I have to try & be true to myself.

Surrealist is just another job, it is just something that I do, and have always done. To me it is nothing special, it is almost boring.

Reality is the most surreal experience possible.
Consciousness is the strangest thing in our existance better to learn all about it!
The cosmic joke is on us!
Where do those ideas come from?
Paint them now, before they go away...
Viewing the world through multi-colored glasses,we are filled with light.

Using many techniques, I am always painting the same idea, the same world, different from our own: silent, distant and lonely... The world that seems to wait for somebody. That somebody might be you? Who knows?"
Best wishes from faraway province of dusty light...

I know the formal definitions, I've read Breton etc., but for me surrealism in art is defined by the quality of the artist that trusts their irrational inspirations enough to rescue them from the contentlessness of the purely abstract.

Para mim ser surrealista é andar onde todos os outros andam e ver o mundo como só eu o conheço...
È ter a chave dar porta que ninguém vê, é abraçar a terá e cheirar o mar, é sonhar impossível dentro do possível, é caminhar sobre água e cheirar-nos a vinho.
É comer pão e cagar trigo, é lamber farinha e arrotar cerveja é ser aquilo que bem se quer, sem ter de perguntar à sociedade se está ou não correcto. É não ter de pensar ou planear o que se pretende fazer é fazer e pronto.
Ser SURREALISTA é ver o Mundo e viver a vida como se ainda estivesse-mos dentro da barriga das nossas mães.

Surrealist is freedom, You can paint or do what you want, It's your imagination, your dream. A world in peace is surréalist.

To me being a surrealist is taking the real world and bending it to your will, making of it what you want.

For me to be a Surrealists is to be an artist who is a member of the movement called surrealism.
And surrealism is:
A 20th century movement of artists and writers (developing out of Dadaism) who used fantastic images and incongruous juxtapositions in order to represent unconscious thoughts and dreams.

You asked me about my thinking - what is surealissem...
What can I say?
I am only put colours on the canvas - just dooing...

Surrealism, pure psychic Automatism by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or in any other manner, the real operation of the thought. Dictation of the thought, in the absence of any control exerted by the reason, apart from any aesthetic or moral concern.

Le "surréalisme" est d'abord une école, celle de Breton qui est maintenant close.
Reste un esprit qui perdure sous des formes diverses, sans aucune ligne et c'est très bien comme ça.
L'héritage serait une façon de montrer les choses derrière les choses, le sens derrière le sens, au delà de tous les formalismes.

Breaking the law of realism.

I’m glad to be a surrealist; I see that as a gift from my brain to me as a person. It’s really fun to create without thinking and every time there is some new creation, make no difference the technique, it makes me smile…
A disadvantage is; there is no rest anymore, the will to create is very strong, stronger then seeking rest… There is to less time in a day!
Time is the greatest enemy of surrealism, it also killed us at the end.

To be surrealistic is the result of a human's mind struggle to connect with the "holy" upper level of universal life.
My Stavros which was a famous Greek painter unfortunately died some four years ago at the 55 years of age.
I am his wife, Maria.
When I first met him some 25 years ago he was a painter like many others. Not an exception. He painted romantic landscapes and beautyful flowers. Like many artists all over the world...
Our meeting happened not accidentaly.
From the first start we talked much about philosophy, spirit, ancient history, dreams and the surrealism in art.
At the beggining he started to paint surrealism-now I know-only to impress me.
This first attempt to impress me lasted for some months only. After that period he "dived" in his dreams and painted them. His transformation was there!
Some 5 years later he became one of the few Greek surrealists. His paintings were well known also abroad. He became famous. He adored surrealism. He thought like a surrealist. He lived alike. He died the same way. Now i missed him a lot and I dare answer to your question only because I feel myself as -somehow- responsible for his transformation to a surrealist...

Para mí es una forma de ser, anarquía, libertad, rebeldía, utopías... forman sus cimientos. Ser surrealista es ser uno mismo y reconocerse como tal. Romper los propios corsés y aprender a descubrirse. Ser surrealista es ser conocedor de la inmensa potencialidad creadora del ser humano y que solo algunos se arriesgan a buscar. Ser surrealista es ser consciente de uno mismo y sus limitaciones. Ser surrealista es crear por el placer de crear. Ser surrealista es soñar con uno mismo. Ser surrealista es agarrar sueños y convertirlos en realidad. Ser surrealista es agarrar realidades y convertirlas en sueños. Ser surrealista es alcanzar los propios horizontes. Ser surrealista es saber que en cada uno de nosotros existe una replica del Universo. Ser surrealista es serlo...y serlo es mi gran milagro.

I really dont feel like a real surrealist, I just like to draw/paint such not-realistic pictures, maybe a little "poetic", It's just the way I express myself.

I usally prefer to act rather than discuss about art...
Now, it's true the main part of my creations might be considered as Surrealist, but I prefer to say I am an Artist, cause I sometimes make very realistic works close to hyperrealism.
What I like in Surrealism, is ( when painting or drawing ) "playing" instead of "working" and a huge freedom to create.
In France, Surrealism is now rather badly considered by art critics; They say it has lost it's power of subversion, because it has been "recuperated " by the consumery society ( cd covers, for instance ) and advertizing agencies...which I don't care.

Actually I don't think that I'm a surrealist. My art is contemporary, and I can't define it yet, I usually use word pluralism and that means that my artworks, like most contemporary artworks, contain in self or can define in self many styles created in the past. Many styles in the past were built on style before them, but today, our art is built from so many styles so the art in which I recognize all that "past" and "now" i call pluralism.
You can find on the internet places where I define my self as surrealist but I was much younger than, the war in my country was just finished, and my paintings despite of that where optimistic, so I have compared my self with the artists after second world war that went the same way as I, opposite of dadaism ("of negativism").
But also I can define my art as action painting because of my technique, you can use many other styles to describe it, so I would rather say that I'm pluralist.

I guess all it takes is to produce Art that looks through reality, seeing images that are just a little off-centre to the real world. In my case - I try and make believable the unbuildable.

I think to be surrealist in general for me essentialy means that you look at 'reality' through a different view than what is typicaly considered 'reality'. That is probably a bit general but really I do like to keep it open as ultimately it comes down to a feeling or sensation when I am displaced from one realm to another. The funny thing is that often it is things like the News which make give me this sensation.

Well, I wouldn´t say, that I´m a surrealist. I´m coming from surrealism, yes. But that was 10 years ago, meanwhile my way leads me to other topics.
Of course I still do a surreal painting here and then, but not so often.
Thats why I cannot really answer your question. I do this and that, my paintings are always a mirror of the time I live in, a mirror of what happens in my life.

To answer your question, it is what it is, with the interpretations left to the audience.

For me, surrealists are romantics and poets.
It is all about memories, dreams, desires and reflections.
It is about putting symbols and fantasies together.
It is more real than the real world.
It is an inbetween world.
It is about my tastes in things and objects.
It is about gestures and feelings and touching.
It is a world of "ideal love" for me ...with passion and humor.
It can be naughty. It can have many interpretations.
But, it must be well-painted and well-designed with roots in the past.
And musical ambience.

A style of stressing the subconscious or nonrational significance of imagery arrived at by automatism or the exploitation of chance effects, unexpected juxtapositions, etc.

The Surrealism Movement was a reaction to fascism that was sweeping across Europe. I see myself as an anti-fascist and an anti-imperialist. All my life I have been a pacifist and political activist. In my art and writing I explain how I would run the world if it was up to me. This is my political web log.

It involves a shamanism, alternating awarenesses, the exploration of the states of being relative to the art media.

I think artists are not supposed to think about what they are. Just create something what they like...

I am not a really surrealist but I makes use of it, it always have there elements surrealists in my tables it is the poetic means to express the nonsense of the life.

To be surrealist is to have too much of the truth always in you mind constantly make every thing everyone else says a lie.

To be a surrealist is to allow for the unexpected or the unlikely to have a place in reality. This creates an unusual set of circumstances in life, and challenges the safety of living withing the confines of the "known". To reach outside of the known leads to progress, innovation and growth.