Drawing : 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

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

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?

See also:

Lindsay Kokoska