I believe that spiritual art is truly inspiring and can be akin to many beautiful works of religious art. A spiritual link into the mind of an artist to churn out a work of landscape or portrait that drives our relationship to divinity and religion is always a graceful concept if done with care. When one thinks of spiritual art, what exactly does it mean?
Spiritual art by definition
Spiritualist art or spirit art or mediumistic art or psychic painting, according to Wikipedia, is art influenced by spiritualism. This type of expression is best described as how we view life after death, and the varying beliefs that branch from this point.
A pioneer in spiritual expression
Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884), a famous spiritual artist, has accomplished the connection to religious spiritualism in an abstract and very dream-like piece. In her portrait, The Portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ, she does not use objects of the natural world and uses small details and layers. This draws out the surreal feeling of another world, of a spiritual feeling, of an emotional connection that she is bringing out. In her own words, she is trying to use these details to contact God.
I find that this artistic representation of spiritual guidance toward a relationship with God as being a highly potent and intense connection, from the conception of the portrait to the act of painting in of itself. The truth of the work and the end result speaks for itself brilliantly. The revelation of such a practice is what gives it such an elegant projection of love for our Creator, and the awe the relationship inspires.
Installation of modern spiritual art: Creative Spirits
In 2022, a modern portrait of spiritualism was represented in a collection of 100 mediumistic artists that had been surveyed over the last 165 years supported and sustained by The College of Psychic Studies. Vivienne Roberts, the curator of the event, succinctly explains the need to keep our modern life and technology flow into our art and spirituality: “The idea of the gateway resonates in both [the late 19th/early 20th century and today], where technology makes what was invisible visible. Historically, advancements in telescopes and microscopes visualized the minuscule and galaxy. In the 21st century, the internet as a gateway is also making visible our every search, answering things we could not before.”
This installation, to me, is an example of reaching out to a worldly perspective of many types of spiritual and religious ideals. The idea of making the invisible visible brings about a wild curiosity. Scientists do this with microscopes, being able to recognize the patterns and understand the most invisible structure of all: an atom. Artist’s and their installations throughout history seem to be liken to the microscopes put up to our our cultural and social standards, sizing up our hearts and minds, allowing us to see the truth. They put a spotlight on the unusual, the downtrodden, the darkness and the light. To elevate the esoteric, strange and wonderful onto a beautiful and brilliant canvas. This delves into what makes us all inevitably human. Curiosity. What is beyond our realm of living? Ghosts? Energies? Spirits? Angels? Demons? Can we somehow find or search for God in between these lines and canvases?
An epic spiritual journey told in sweeping blue lines
In a blue hued, sweeping epic titled, The Reach, 2020, by American artist Carla Jay Harris, we see elements of nature and emotions gathered in elemental shades and wind, the atmosphere of change and culture, the endless search for God. She implements a background of storytelling and her own sense of spirituality to imbue a relationship of longing, mortality, frailty and the longstanding relationship between nature and religious expression in art. Harris states:
“In my larger art practice, I always start with something going on in my personal life,” Harris explained. “And after graduate school, I felt a bit sort of adrift. Looking at mythology and spirituality was my own way to ground myself. And that’s what really got me into it.”
This brilliant sort of inspired technique of using mythology is a great way to connect with new and younger audience’s to understand and appreciate that sense of spiritual connection, belonging and to define their own relationship to spirituality.
“When I hear spirituality,” she continued, “I think about a connection to something larger than self, however you define that. God, a sense of the universe, a sense of nature.”
Modern art has represented a myriad of spiritual elements that can relate to our religious beliefs and our own views. Sometimes they are opposing views and other times they can align themselves with our beliefs so elegantly we feel they speak directly to us as though they have a direct line to our heart strings. Harris, an LA based artist, does just this very kind of work, in her gorgeous exhibition, Celestial Bodies: Eye of Eden and The Beginning, she creates two masterful scenes that envelop religious symbolism (such as the halo like image in Eye of Eden) which doubles as a representation of the sun, and dark sweeping drama of the second piece that tells us a continuous story without words.
In our ever growing need to connect to others with art, media, our music and our words, we can see that sharing and enjoying the presence of spirituality in modern art and in the past has given us the tools and ideas to keep our children and our continued generations together and aligned, for religious expression and for our spiritual freedom.
For more information about Carla Jay Harris and her brilliant and talented works of art follow this link. I was mesmerized and truly loved her brilliant ways of telling stories through her works of art, and I appreciate the raw fragility of the pieces.
References to quotes and information:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgiana_Houghton
https://hyperallergic.com/803561/spiritual-art-is-back-again/
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-contemporary-artists-embracing-spirituality-work
https://www.collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk/special-events/spirit-inspired-art/creative-spirits-college-exhibition/
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In