Witnesses of the invisible

Perhaps artists are meant to be witnesses of the invisible and that our role in society is to keep a door open to alternative possibilities. For instance, when the Pope died recently it did seem from what was said in his obituaries, that he had valued art as a vehicle that could both transcend boundaries and communicate to a wide audience. 

He also apparently thought that the artist could be a witness and that the work of art is a strong proof that incarnation is possible. I presumed he had believed that an artwork could embody or carry within itself an idea of the spiritual. By doing so, the artwork would then open out a possibility or doorway, through which a person could enter into an embodiment of the divine. Art becoming a passage or encounter, that can help someone to pass on from their every day materiality to a belief in a higher spirituality. 

Hilma af Klint

Georgia Houghton

Our present society does seem in need of a spiritual infusion. Some of the artists that have recently being brought back to our attention and have received critical acclaim perhaps reflect this need. Georgia Houghton was a British artist who, in the 1860s, began to produce automatic drawings, which she claimed were guided by spirits. Her watercolours and coloured pencil drawings are intricate and delicate, including complex geometric patterns interspersed with flower type forms. Although ignored during her lifetime she has recently been brought back into the attention of the art world, because researchers are looking to rebalance the art canon by finding more women artists but there has also been an upsurge in interest in artists that 'dared' to approach the spiritual seriously. Much of this research has been driven by the rediscovery of the work of Hilma af Klint. 

Georgia Houghton: Glory be to God: 1868

Agnes Pelton is another artist who has been re-discovered, her work is though much closer in sensibility to contemporary artists than the work of Houghton. 

Agnes Pelton: Winter 1933

Agnes Pelton: Star Gazer: 1929

I suspect her formal sensibility was as much one in tune with Disney as it was with the work of Madame Blavatsky. Even so her images still resonate as spiritual doorways. 

From Bambi: 1942

Walt Disney developed some totally non figurative scenes for Fantasia and his interests clearly overlap with the interests of several mystics from the time. The saturated colours that were typical of animation at the time and the abstracts were not that far away from those envisioned by Besant and Leadbeter in 'Thought Forms' 

From Fantasia: 1940

From 'Thought Forms' 1905

Lindsay Kokoska contemporary spiritual artist and AI user is typical of a new generation of creators who are seeking to provide art that supports this contemporary need. Although too 'cosmic' and cliched for my own taste, I can understand why her work is popular and it is fulfilling a need in a much more healthy way than the practices of some of the new wave religious movements or a return to the re-establishment of the old values of the Abrahamic religions, the followers of which are still creating havoc right across the world.  

Lindsay Kokoska

Kokoska's work is also inspired by visions of Quantum Entanglement and she creates immersive environments, within which you might practice yoga or meditate. 

Lindsay Kokoska

The recent Bodyscapes exhibition in Barcelona is an example of how a contemporary sensibility is developing in relation to these issues.

Christy Lee Rogers

Bodyscapes at the Load Gallery, looked at how artists approach the body not as an object, but as a mutable environment shaped by experience and emotions but perhaps more importantly it focused on artists using new technology and those providing immersive experiences. I was reminded of our historic use of glowing stained glass art within dark churches and the need to make candle lit images in caves.

Christy Lee Rogers

There is a tendency to poo poo these types of responses to our contemporary world as being naive but I'm personally reassured that at least there is an attempt to develop ways of working that acknowledge a spiritual need. I also think that it is no accident that all the artists in the Bodyscapes exhibition were like Hilma af Klint and Georgia Houghton women. The hard to acknowledge fact in the centre of this is for myself, a realisation that AI will become more and more present in every aspect of our lives. In this case it is AI that is driving the imagery of artists such as Lindsay Kokoska. It is reaching out into all of the cosmic imagery available and checking out at what speed to project movement, what sorts of colours to ensure a spiritual experience and as it does, whatever information is collected together is digitally remembered, so that if I wanted to, I too could access AI and ask for it to provide me with cosmic imagery designed to tap into our emotive need for spiritual nourishment. Is this the future? Will we in time simply ask an invisible interface to provide us with a spiritual experience and lo and behold, there it will be, all ready for us to step into? Is this too what we need to witness as artists?

The original people who have inhabited Australia for thousands of years have their own answer to a need for cosmic imagery. If you stare at the night sky long enough, you may begin to see what they saw. Especially if you live in the southern hemisphere where the stars cluster together with a magnificence never glimpsed in northern skies. 

The Emu and the Milky Way

One of the most familiar sights in the Southern night sky is the Milky Way, its dark body stretches the length of our awareness of the galaxy we belong to. In the stories of the original inhabitants of Australia, this shape is that of a gigantic Emu. The sky for them is not just a place for stars but is a reflection of the Earth, it holds stories and astronomical observations that remind the peoples that can communicate with it, of astronomical phenomena like eclipses, practical guidance for living such as the differences in climate associated with changes in the year and even as a map to guide directions for travel; these ancient knowledge systems being far more sophisticated that we often imagine.

An Aboriginal tale tells a story of the rage of the Brolga bird, who one day during an argument with emu over who's chicks were the most beautiful, in a temper picked up and hurled emu's egg into the sky. In those days the sky was the home of the cloud man and emu's egg smashed into his wood pile and as it did, it burst into flames, throwing light and warmth down to the earth below and the cloud man has let it burn ever since. We now call that old wood pile the sun. In such a tale everyday things are transformed into cosmic events, the more sophisticated we think we are, the less some of us see such moments of wonder, but if we are to stay attuned to the cosmos that surrounds us, we need to keep our minds open to alternative possibilities

See also:

Embrace insignificance 

Drawing and spirituality

Diagrams: Visualising the invisible

Michael Kenny: Drawings for Easter

AI and drawing

On AI and disegno

Drawing with light

Bill Viola

Para-scientific visions and Rayonism

Lindsa