Art as a Spiritual Journey
What Hilma Af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky were saying
Dear Hearts,
I am so excited about the connections I'm making between art and spirit! For years I have wanted my art to help people to find a path to Joy and a connection to the Great Mystery. I get such joy in creating beauty and I want to share that joy! Creating art is a form of prayer for me. I sat down the other day to list the ways creating art helps me on my spiritual journey. Here are some of them:
Prayer of Gratitude: When I draw or paint from nature, I feel such awe and thanks for the beauty of trees, water, mountains, and sky!
Connection with Nature and with the Source of Life: When I paint from nature or from my photos of nature, I feel a connection with the Source of Life. There is an energy that flows through all creation. When I am out in the woods or on the boat or at the seashore; I feel that energy and I feel a part of it. When I paint from photos I have taken, I remember that feeling of connection. I hope that my paintings can bring that to the viewer.
Seeing what is, not what I want or expect to see: When I draw what is in front of me, rather than from another person's drawing or even from a photo, I train my mind to see what is really there. This transfers into my daily life and thinking, helping me to see past stereotypes, to understand more deeply not only the world of nature but also the world of man.
Healing: When I am upset, creating beauty calms me, heals my fears, gives me hope. When my mind is at rest, my body's healing power is strengthened.
Self Revelation: Sometimes a doodle will show me something about myself that I need to change, like the one that showed me I was keeping myself poor by buying into the starving artist myth.
Guidance and Problem Solving: Creating the repeating patterns of a zentagle can help me reorganize my mind to create the outcome I want. Doodling can show me where I need to go. Neurographics can even activate the wisdom in my subconscious mind.
Visioning: Making collages of words and pictures from a magazine are an especially helpful way to create a vision of where I want to go next with my life.
I didn't realize until I started doing the research that there has always been a strong connection between art—especially visual images, music, and dancing—and the spiritual life. I knew that Buddhist monks drew mandalas then erased them to show the impermanence of life, but I didn't know that mandalas were a teaching tool for spiritual concepts and a vehicle to draw down the Energy. This is a whole book of discovery for me! I knew that some Native American shamans used sand paintings and music or drumming to facilitate healing, but I didn't think much about it. I knew that Europeans, especially in the middle ages, used paintings of saints and bible stories to teach Christianity, but I didn't know that Kandinsky and other modern abstract artists were attempting to show the unseen spiritual world through their art.
I didn't know about Georgiana Houghten, who exibited her Spirit guided paintings in London in 1871,
The Eye of God
and Hilma Af Klint, who showed her paintings expressing the nature of the unseen universe two years before Kandinsky showed his first abstract paintings. Both were Theosophists who believed in the expression of the unseen through color, line, and shape.
Paintings by Hilma Af Klint
or about Emma Kunz
Painting by Emma Kunz
who used art to draw down energy for healing and to help her understand her client's needs.
I'm on a quest now. I am studying the religious and spiritual art of cultures across the world to better understand the connection between art and spirit, and to discover techniques that can help me and others to connect more deeply to the Great Mystery. I am learning about contemporary artists who are expressing the unseen in their art. I am learning about healing through art, not only healing the mind but also healing the body. I am learning how to more effectively let my subconscious talk to me through my brush and my pen, through color and line, shape and value. You can join me in this journey by subscribing.
I have been experimenting with abstract mixed media paintings. Sometimes they will give me a meaning days after I finish them, like this one, “Follow the River”:
Back in my hippie days we used to say, “Go with the flow”. I like “Follow the River” better; the river will take you somewhere new and exciting, to new ways of doing things, new friends, new adventures. Following the river gives me agency; I am choosing where to go, how to travel, and even how fast. Going with the flow is more passive. I am excited to see where the river of energy I am following now will take me!
What do you think I should title this one? The Celtic symbol on the vase is for love between two people, souls united. To me this painting expresses the synergy that happens between me and my beloved, that results in an explosion of love, not only for each other, but for everyone we know, for the world. What do you think I should call it? I would love your thoughts in the comments.
This painting will hang at Anu Rana’s Healthy Kitchen on Vashon Island during March and probably April, along with some of my other silk and watercolor paintings of flowers. I am so hungry for color! I suspect you are too.
Where is your life taking you? Are you an active participant? Is life carrying you along at the pace you want to go? Are you trying to “push the river” and make things happen faster? Sometimes it is so hard to let things take the time they need to take! I keep having to remind myself that sometimes I do need to relax and let things happen in their own time.
Georgiana Houghton, produced over 155 extraordinary watercolour spirit drawings.
Hilma Af Klint, one of Sweden’s most esteemed artists, supported herself with her conventional paintings. She felt her real work was the spirit paintings she showed to only a few “spiritually interested people.
Wassily Kandinsky a well known Russian artist and pioneer of abstract art.
Piet Mondrain, a Dutch artistn famous for his colorful squares and lines.
.