From Pablo Picasso to Jackson Pollock, some of the world's most celebrated artists have been inspired by the work of the Surrealists. This exuberant movement, including Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Max Ernst and Joan Miró, responded to the ideas of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud about dreams and the unconscious mind, and in doing so liberated many artists to look beyond reality to explore the world of free thought and the imagination. Now The Times and Tate Modern are giving 11 to 18-year-olds the chance to do the same and maybe even have their work exhibited at the gallery.

After the success of the Drawing Challenge last year, for which we received more than 1,000 entries, and the 34 winners had their work displayed in a special exhibition at the Tate Modern, we bring you the UBS Tate/Times Painting Challenge, inspired by the Poetry & Dream wing of the UBS Openings: Tate Modern Collection.

If you are aged between 11 and 18, all you need to do is either visit the Tate or take a tour of the gallery's Poetry & Dream wing online. Think about how these works might inspire you, then select a work, artist or theme as a starting point for your own painting. You can use any painting medium as long as your work is no bigger than A3 in size. Once you've finished, simply take a digital photograph of it (you can find tips on how to do this on the Painting Challenge website) and upload it to the site. Then you can tell us a bit about the work and what inspired you.

Ann Coxon, assistant curator of displays at Tate Modern and one of the judges of the competition, says: “We're looking for the obvious things such as technique, originality, imagination and the success with which somebody has managed to express what they intend to. Because they'll be responding to a particular work, it'd be nice to see that they've captured some of the spirit of that work, but produced something of their own, gone off into another imaginative realm.”

The deadline is November 3, 2008, so pick up your paintbrush and let your imagination run wild. You might just find yourself in one of the best modern-art galleries in the world. Imagine that.

www.tate.org.uk/go/painting

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