In her own words...
I do recall I had a dream about doors a long time ago, and those doors appeared in many canvases afterward. It was a horrible dream. I opened it and it was another door right behind it.
—from interview with Cate McQuaid, “Dorothea Tanning Paints Again, and Speaks for Herself,” The Boston Sunday Globe, April 4, 1999, p. N6.