Location: The South of the Crimea (Ukraine). Private hotel with a beautithful view.

The Crimea ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea ) is extremely popular destination for the tourists. Throughout its great history, the Crimea had seen a great number of the rulers and still bears traces of various cultures and civilizations of the past. Its atmosphere is saturated with the fragrance of the ancient legends of the Olympic gods, amazons, Greeks, Cimmerians, Taurians, Sarmatian, Scythians, Goths and remains here for many thousands years. The gods, as well as the Nature have been incredibly generous to the peninsula. Its fantastic landscapes could take your breath and may challenge the most beautiful views of the world.

Seminar information

The tutor:

Oleg Korolev is working with oil painting for decades, studied and graduated from the Crimean Art College, Painting department; as well as studied the Mische technique with Maestro Ernst Fuchs firsthand in the Apocalypse chapel, St.Egyd Cathedral, Klagenfurt, Austria.

Site of Oleg Korolev http://www.koro-art.com/

The Techniques:

Students of the seminar will have the unique opportunity of studying of
every oil painting technique they wish on the private request:
Ala-Prima, Ala-Prima impasto, Mische (Ala-tempera), Ala-Prima+Mische,
Ala-Prima impasto+Mische, Mische+Ala-Prima glazings etc

During of the Seminar period two works will be painted from life on the “Plein air”

1. Still life
2. A nude in a drapery (half-figure).

Art Supplies:

The students must bring their own oil paints, linseed oil, turpentine
(pinene), brushes ( both: bristle and kolinsky sable), art knife, pallete, a
sketchbook and pencils. One tube of the white color tempera (emulsion).

The Seminar will provide the primed and stretched canvases
( the size is around of 50×60cm or 19.7” x 23.6” inch) as well as the
easels will be given for the time of the Seminar period.

Schedule:

Tuition for the various painting technics includes teaching 6 days per week,
7 hours per day Classes are held 10:00 – 1:00 and 2:00 – 6:00, Mon – Sat.
Your accommodation begins at 1 September and ends at the day of 15
September. The accommodation is in the private hotel, most with 2 people per room.

Price:

To reserve your place, you must register with a deposit.
Last date for reservations is August 20st.

Please contact me and I will supply you with the more detailed information
on the seminar costs.

Total :

Tuition for the 15 days.
15 nights of accommodation at a private hotel.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
Art supplies (easels, canvases).

Visa ( Visa free regime ).

VISA-FREE REGIME has been established for citizens of the following countries:

Austria
Belgium
Canada
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Poland
Portugal
Principality of Andorra
Principality of Liechtenstein
Principality of Monaco
Republic of Iceland
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
The Holy See (State of the Vatican City)
The Netherlands
The Swiss Confederation
United Kingdom
United States of America

Citizens of the above-mentioned countries do not need visas to enter Ukraine or transit through its territory for the period of time of up to 90 days with a valid travel passport.

Visas are still required for citizens who enter Ukraine with the purpose
of employment, permanent residency, study and work at the diplomatic
missions in Ukraine or with any other purpose if they are going to stay
in Ukraine for more than 90 days.

A Plan of the Intensive Painting Seminar:

1 September (arrival) – Ala Prima
2 September – Ala Prima ( finishing)
3 September – Ala Prima Impasto
4 September – Tempera grisaille + Oil glazing

5 September – Weekend (Theory, personal lecturing, advices)

6 September – Ala Prima Impasto ( finishing)
7 September – Mische
8 September – Mische (finishing)
8 A Still life in a personally chosen technique
9 A Still life in a personally chosen technique
10 A Still life in a personally chosen technique (finishing).
11 A half-figure in a personally chosen technique.
13 A half-figure in a personally chosen technique.
14 A half-figure in a personally chosen technique (finishing).

15 September – Weekend (Theory, personal lecturing, advices) (departure)

_______

4 Ways of Oil technique ( plus additional variations).
13 Practice days
2 Theory days
Tuition for the various painting technics includes teaching 6 days per week,
( 7th day – 3 hours of Theory, personal lecturing, advices)
7 hours per day Painting Practice Classes are held 10:00 – 1:00 and 2:00 – 6:00, Mon – Sat.

Contact:

To take part in the Seminar and reserve your place, as well as ask your
questions, please contact me by e-mail korolev.oleg@gmail.com
Or by Skype: koro3koro3koro3

each shard in the oracle card deck
shares splendor from a different part of the world
expressing a unique and individual vision
and yet all the different visions are threads in a weave
expressing the spirit of the inspired divine imagination

single cards can grace altars and mantles, walls and workplaces,
fridges, lockers and dashboards
groups of cards combine to make microgallerys
complete sets of cards create a syncretic oracle deck

for the first time these cards are available as a subscription
you can have two new cards mailed to you every month for 20 months

the subscription includes limited edition cards from Alex and Allyson
Grey
which are not available on the main elvism store
as well as a variety of bonus fleet media

you can subscribe for only as many months as you like for
$5 + stamp cost per month
or get the whole set at a reduced rate

International $88 + stamps = $122
USA $88 + stamps = $110
Canada $88 + stamps = $99

support this non-profit arts initiative today
paypaldelvin@crystalandspore.com
or contact delvin for more details and other payment options

a blessing of life
delvin

www.elvism.net

Exhibition runs from 9th September, 7pm to 11th October

Galerie10
A-1010 Wein
3rd Floor
Getreidemarkt 10
Vienna

To employ traditional terms, David is self taught, though his ongoing education consists of a lifelong dedication to the intricate study of nature’s delicately balanced systems.

[Show as slideshow]

An emerging master painter, his artistic focus is to elegantly fuse the richness of traditional symbolic themes with the innovative spirit of a modern renaissance man.

David’s life is in service to drawing forth new visions which invite a wide audience to bask in the inspirational light of creativity.

David’s paintings are inventive in their forms as he has taken his art far beyond the limitations of the status quo, into an altogether unprecedented realm. By devising special techniques which allow his canvases to be constructed in nearly any shape, the form of the canvas itself becomes suited to adequately fulfill the depth of his visions.

In joyous exploration of creative freedom, elegant forms, curves and impossible angles emerge in his 2- and 3-dimensional paintings. This versatility spans genre and medium alike, allowing the artist full access to the brilliant splendor of unlimited creation. Synthesizing with visionary artistry, imaginal and photorealistic subject matter is a triumphant aspiration to create artifacts and visual experiences which are otherwise unavailable to the human eye.

Recognizing the necessity and readiness in modern times for a conscious rebirthing of culture, in 2009 David founded Art Spirit Now, an arts organization with the exhilarating declaration, “The Renaissance is Now”.

David Heskin, his art and writing have appeared in numerous publications:

Print Media:
CoSM : Journal of Visionary Culture, Issues 2-5
Higher Glyphiks : Vision Catalogue, Medicine Catalogue & System Catalogue
13 Moon Natural Time Calendar

Online Media:
The Visionary Revue
Lila : Contemporary Visionary & Sacred Art

See David Heskin’s art sites:

newskinstudio.com
davidheskin.com
dreamingconex.us
artspiritnow.org

-the Wizard

Please come see the show, exhibiting through September 25th

Regular Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Check website for hours during Burning Man

Become a fan and learn about all of our amazing events!

IMAGINARIA: an exhibition celebrating the beauty and power of unbridled creative vision

INNERSCAPES Group Show in the Earth Temple featuring:

Viktor Safonkin, Brian Froud, Amanda Sage, Chet Zar, Xavi, Adam Scott Miller, Autumn Skye Morrison, Michael Divine, Ben Tolman, Krystle Smith, David Heskin, Michael Pukac, Yurik Riegel, Ceci Castelblanco, David Lawell, Darren Minke, Brian Smith, Sunny Strasburg & more!

Soul Salon artists:
James Zar
&
Erial Ali

“The Gift” Book Preview by
Michael Divine

Faerie Ring Mandala by:
Nature Dreamweaver

Lighting by:
Luminature

***************************************************
Show runs through September 25th
Regular Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat 1-6p
OPENING NIGHT $10.00
***************************************************
In association with The Confluence and TenThousandVisions

“The Temple is Inside”

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138451082844958&ref=ts

Thursday August 5th:
Raw Vision Thursday Dinner

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=142502275767625&ref=ts

Thursday August 12th:
Pre Burning Man Artwalk Party:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=132516250123162&ref=ts

EVERY Wednesday:
Buddhist Yoga & Meditation

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=135514793153967&ref=ts

We are also currently taking submissions for conscious/healing/awareness raising workshops, events, classes and lectures. Please contact our Special Events coordinator at Radhika@TempleofVisions.com

————————————————
REALIZE: a TOV Burning Man Installation Fundraiser:
Saturday July 31st
9pm-3am

The Temple has dedicated itself to being of service at Burning Man this year with an installation/space with performances, workshops, rituals and night time tea service. It is our honor to be hosted by legendary camp: Sacred Spaces Village. As we embark on this great task, we realize we can’t do it without your help. So we are pleased to bring you another amazing Temple event to help fund our Burning Man installation, and so we can keep our volunteers happy and healthy and have an awesome space to have you as our guests on the Playa

with

Imagika OM (Temple of Visions)- http://www.djimagika.com/
Roxy Contin- http://www.roxycontin.com/
Kalix Sky
Galactic Temple Groove Choir (Temple of Visions)
Rik Sharaj & Karishtech- http://www.mandala-music.com/
& more

Appearances by
FLOW TEMPLE- http://www.flowtemple.org/

Live painting by Temple of Visions Artists

Live Sand Mandala by:
Paul Whitehead http://www.cypherarts.com/paulwhitehead/

Fashion by:

Lady Muse- http://www.ladymuse.com/& more!

Raw Food by:
Living Art Cuisine

Fine Tea Service by:
Om Shan Tea, LA- http://www.omshantea.com/losangeles/

Tarot Consultations by:
Seraphime Rhyianir
Medium, Astrologer, Card Reader, Poet

http://sidereallyoccultated.blogspot.com/

PLUS:

Our latest exhibition: IMAGINARIA
Art Raffle & silent auctions
Oracle Readings

$10 suggested donation

to make monetary donations via Paypal, please visit:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftempleofvisions.com%2Fsupport-the-gallery%2F&h=3b833nESVELzFs0tLrn128Yr0Bg

———————————————
RAW VISION THURSDAY:
a visionary dining experience

THURSDAY August 5th
7pm-Midnight

ONLY 30 presale TICKETS AVAILABLE!!!
Come support this healthy community dining concept

Enter the Temple & immerse yourself in a dazzling exhibition of visionary art from around the world. Be served an exquisite selection of raw delights while music fills the air. After the meal, the whole group shares a sweet ‘living mandala’ in Dionysian bliss. Music winds up the evening and all are welcome to stay for dancing, tea and flowing conversation

RAW CUISINE BY:

Living Art Cuisine

FINE TEA SERVICE BY:

Om Shan Tea
LIVE SITAR BY

Rik Sharaj

plus our new exhibition: IMAGINARIA

7:00pm doors open,
8pm food service
Limited to only 25 tickets!
$25.00 presale
30.00 at the door

TICKETS AVAILABLE AT:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/121615

RSVP at: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=142502275767625&ref=ts

————————————————
PRE BURNING MAN ARTWALK PARTY:
Thursday August 12th
1pm-11pm

For the Artwalk just before Burning Man, we’re opening our doors to our friends in unique fashions and performers/dj’s that will exemplify Playan joy!

We’ll have fashions by:

Organic Armor – http://www.organicarmor.com/
S&G Clothing- http://sandgclothing.com/
Lady Muse- http://www.ladymuse.com/
Roxy Contin-http://roxycontin.com/
Finkelhoo Fashions- http://finkelhoo.com/
Tiger Moon

Live Painting on the Balcony Stage by:
Michael Pukac- http://www.michaelpukac.com/

With dj sets by:
Kalix Sky
& more

Raw food by:
Living Art Cuisine

Fine tea service by:
Om Shan Tea, LA

+ our IMAGINARIA exhibition

and more exciting performances in the works!

If you would like to be a part of this event, please contact us! It’s all about participation!

We are also putting the word out for any street-legal art cars that would like to come down !!

Artwalk events are ALWAYS free!
RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=132516250123162&ref=ts
———————————————–
EVERY WEDNESDAY BUDDHIST YOGA & MEDITATION:

Join us every Wednesday, open arrival from 7pm-8:30pm.
Cultivating mindful-awareness and insight meditation to integrate your body, breath, mind and spirit. Followed by sound healing with Pali Chant.
Please bring a yoga mat, towel and small pillow.
Facilitated by Priya Mohan from the Sangha Wellness Foundation

…$10 suggested donation
no one turned away from lack of funds

Thank you for supporting the Temple of Visions!
Many blessings,
TOV

http://templeofvisions.com/

Temple of Visions
719 South Spring St.
Los Angeles 90014

Galactic Trading Card set

In the light of Lila, a full gtc deck set has appeared including the long out of print, limited edition of 100, galactik trading card box sets from 2004. The meta-set containing the box and all other cards in
print is available at www.elfintome.com. This is a fundraiser for the project at this crucial time in its development as a global arts initiative.

Visionary art is not easily defined. As a recognised genre it is recent, a half-century old at most – its first generation masters are still practicing, its horizons are still expanding. Visionary art is contemporary. To search for a defining boundary therefore is fruitless; definitions, being restrictive, are more readily established in retrospect. But if we cannot define, then we can unearth. For there exists in any art genre a lineage, a bloodline, and in Visionary art we find a genealogy that can be traced through the Surrealist and Fantastic Realist movements of last century, past the Renaissance, across continents and centuries, back to the first dawn.

Solstitial Bridge by Breck Outland

The position of drawing as a specialised discipline within this genealogy is an even more subtle ancestry to unthread. In Visionary art we find a bewildering breadth of subject matter; we find particular attention given to dreams, to death and memory, unexplored terrains of the psyche, madness, mythic creatures, gods and demons, the organic and mechanical, anatomy, animal consciousness and organic emergence, geometry and mandalas, and the symbolism of alchemy, astrology and assorted wisdom traditions. Yet none of this is essential, none of this in itself is sufficient to make a piece of art ‘Visionary’, for the genre rests upon a unified and identifiable foundation of technique, a technical style and temperament that those artists specialising in ink and pencil share with their painter siblings.

Ernst Fuchs has named this “ein verschollener Stil”- a “hidden prime of styles.” [i] This unity of style is the genetic code writ through the Visionary artist’s bloodline; it is the grammar upon which their language is constructed.

Visionary art rests upon a unified and identifiable foundation of technique, a technical style and temperament that those artists specialising in ink and pencil share with their painter siblings – a “hidden prime of styles.” This unity of style is the genetic code writ through the Visionary artist’s bloodline; it is the grammar upon which their language is constructed.

To begin at the beginning.

The underground caverns of Lascaux in Dordogne, the guide switches off his flashlight. “The senses suddenly are wiped out,” one visitor recounts, “the millennia drop away… you were never in deeper darkness in your life. It was – I don’t know, just a complete knock out. You don’t know whether you are looking north, south, east, or west. All orientation is gone, and you are in a darkness that never saw the sun.” [ii]

This primordial darkness is a space of pre-conceptual potential. This is a creative space.

The guide switches his torch back on and turns it to the roof and walls. Emerging from the depths of the rock are painted animals, images of bizarre creatures, half-human and half-animal hybrids. “A strange beast with a gravid belly and long pointed horns walks behind a line of wild cattle, horses, deer and bulls that seem simultaneously in motion and at rest.” [iii]

What motivates this art?

Ernst Fuchs is the recognised Grandfather of the contemporary visionary art movement.

It must be something of deep significance. The upkeep of these sacred sites was hugely unpragmatic. It was dangerous, exhausting, uneconomical and time-consuming. Visitors to these ancient caves were required to climb for some eighty feet down a sloping tunnel, sixty-five feet beneath the earth; some caves were so deep it took an hour to descend into them. Yet these sacred sites endured for 20,000 years.

This is not art born of idle fancy. It is not art which serves simply to satisfy the individual creative will, nor is it concerned with interpreting and analysing social context. This is art born out of a direct confrontation with certain inescapable fundamentals – death, physicality, conscious awareness, and the relation of humans to the organic and animal world.

These caves reveal that our ancient ancestors felt profound anxiety over the slaughtering of beasts in the hunt that were their friends and patrons. Anthropologists tell us that to assuage this anxiety they surrounded the hunt with taboos and prohibitions. They believed that the Animal Master had sent his flocks to the lower world, and that the performance of certain rites returned the slaughtered animals to posthumous life in world of the spirit. Hunters therefore hunted in a state of ritual purity, abstaining from sex before an expedition. They felt a deep empathy with their prey. Bushmen on the Kalahari planes reconstructed their kill by laying out its skeleton and pelt; others buried the non-edible remains. Hunters lay beside the dying animals and wept with them, imitating their movements and participating in their passing. [iv] In their sacred caves, they smeared the walls with the blood, excrement, and fat of the kill to restore it, symbolically, to the earth. Animal blood and fat were ingredients of Palaeolithic paints. The act of painting was an act of restoration.

These ancient cave paintings were the attempt to construct a visual language, a language in which the profound and disturbing mysteries of existence could be given voice: the incomprehensible translated into an aesthetic form, rendering it sacred, thus illuminating an essential value in the otherwise fragile and bewildering course of a life.

The Czarna Madonna. Ancient religious art is full of traces of mystical experience, indicated by their aesthetic sensibilities.

Visionary art is characterised by the attempt of each artist to develop this shared visual language, a language of illumination initiated by our primordial hunter forbearers. Each artist contributes to this universal narrative in their own distinctive accent, spoken through their chosen discipline – be it oil paint, airbrush, digital art, or drawing.

In sharing the commitment to developing this universal language, the Visionary artist distinguishes herself from gallery politics and financial speculations that unfortunately surround much modernist and post-modern art. Academicism and elitism are dismissed. Cynicism and cold irony give way to quiet contemplation. In Visionary art is the sincere attempt to transcend shock-tactics and cliché in order to revive something eternal within the contemporary experience.

French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau laments, “If only the great myths of antiquity were continually translated, not by historians, but by eternal poets. We must escape that puerile chronology which forces artists to translate their own times, in all its finitude, rather than the eternal… To give to myths their full intensity, we mustn’t lock them away in their own epoch – they need release from the moulds and styles of their time.” [v]

The Visionary artist is the eternal poet – ‘ein verschollener Stil’ is the grammar through which they speak.

The lineage from these founding fathers is subtle but true. From the shaman’s etchings, this artistic spirit continues into the carvings of the ancients. It is in the Egyptian pantheon and the Mesopotamian cuneiform. It finds expression in the art of the ancient Cycladic and the Minoans; and from these, ancient Greek mythology is born. In Middle America, it arose among the Aztecs, Mayans and Toltecs, and endures today amongst the last surviving indigenous tribes of the Amazon basin. In each of these cultures, common motifs are expressed. We find depictions of the creation and the cosmos, of form rising from the void, of Gods and the sacred hero, and of the endless cycle of death and rebirth. This is not Visionary art, but it is ancestral. [vi]

In the European dark ages the bloodline is more difficult to discern. We find traces in Nordic woodwork, and in the remnants of Celtic carvings – in their animal heraldry and horned gods. It is in the serpentine motifs that scatter the globe at this time, a spiralling symbol of transformative potential. In North America, it finds expression in the Indian peoples’ complex animal mythologies, through totems, weavings and carvings, through masks and dance.

The Visionary lineage predates religion, and has informed sacred art across the millennia. Within ancient Christianity we find Bible covers encrusted with precious gemstones, their contents illumined with arabesques and bestiaries. It is in the mysterious thangka of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. In the geometric mandalas of Persian Sufism. We find the language spoken in the stone and stained-glass facades of Gothic cathedrals and the egg-tempera icons of the Byzantines. It endures into the frescos of the Italians, into the oil and resin altarpieces of the Netherlandish painters.

Ohlhaeuser, a master painter in the mische technique.

In each of these, the subtle thread endures.

The great achievements of European art for the last thousand years have predominantly been in its depiction of the sensory world. It was five hundred years ago that the rules of perspective became widely known and began to be harnessed by artists, these painters embodying the discoveries and new understandings of actual geometry. This resulted in art that was realistic and empirical, and primarily concerned with nature. Even religious iconography from this period was concerned first and foremost with literal depictions of the virgin birth and crucifixion.

The onset of modern art was essentially a movement away from the sensible world to depictions that mapped the terrain of the mind. This was born out in symbolic, abstract, conceptual, and phenomenological art. In this it was not nature that was being depicted, but the psyche. Not realistic but abstract. Not Euclidean but Surreal. Beginning with Paul Cezanne, who Matisse called “the master of us all” [vii], the fixed perspectives of the material world were broken down and superseded by emotional and psychological participation. Vassily Kandinsky championed this new approach, stating, “It must be possible to hear the whole world as it is, without representational interpretation” [viii], prefiguring a vision drawn exclusively of the mind. Jean Delville and Pavel Tchelitchew were amongst those who pushed this trend over the threshold and into a temperament that may rightly be named Visionary.

Visionary art then is entwined with and born of this modernist thrust, but a number of notable Visionary artists preceded it and we may trace their bloodline.

Twelfth century mystic, polymath, and painter, Hildegard of Bingen, stands removed within the early period of Western art as a herald, her transparency of style and depth of vision being antecedent to later Visionary masters. She also pioneered the fusion of disciplines that has come to characterise modern Visionary art. She set her art in the context of poetry, theatre, and music, just as the modern practitioners of Visionary art are bridging disciplines by working with musicians, film-makers, and architects.

But probably the first true Visionary painter was Hieronymus Bosch. His work, rich in fantastic imagery, presents a door to occluded domains of hell and to a lost paradise. We speak particularly of the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych and the Temptation of St. Anthony. His distinguishing style, influenced by but significantly distinct from the contemporary Flemish practice of applying multiple glosses, bridged the disciplines of drawing and painting as he evolved his technique to ‘draw with his paintbrush’. His idiosyncratic vision and the Flemish style he diverged from each became foundational in the emergence of Visionary art mid-way through the twentieth century.

The earliest Visionaries that followed Bosch worked to elude the currents and fashions of painting in their own times, thus seeking to rise above what Moreau called the “puerile chronology”. Included in these are Goya – with his adumbral murals, and portrayals of Darker Realms in Black Paintings and The Disasters; Henry Fuseli; the engravings of Gustave Doré; and – perhaps most significantly – William Blake with his watercolours and etchings of the Ancient of Days, the Book of Job, the Last Judgement – all accomplished with little or no recognition.

Blake is seminal. In a widely celebrated passage he writes, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, then every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”[ix]

Gustave Moreau, an artist who transcends the definitions of symbolism, essentially a visionary.

In this is the founding dictum of Visionary art.

Following the Renaissance, the spirit of Bosch and Blake continued under the broader heading of Mannerist art in Bartholomäus Spranger and Wendel Dieterlin. In the last two hundred years there emerged the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England, and the Symbolist and Decadent Movements of France and Belgium. These were followed by the later Symbolists, including Odilon Redon, Alfred Kubin, and Max Klinger. These were followed close behind by the Secessionist Visionaries – Gustav Klimt, Viteslaw Masek, and Jan Toorop. Singular amongst all of these was the masterful Gustave Moreau. [x] Each of these artists illuminated the ancient language; each broadening its vocabulary and honing its grammar.

From here, a more recent lineage can be traced with greater precision.

Surrealism must undoubtedly be identified as a direct influence upon Visionary art, but two strains within this movement must be separated and identified. The one, Automatist Surrealism, tended more toward form and abstraction, with Joan Miró heading this group. This movement inspired Abstract Expressionism and Action painting in America. Of these, Visionary art has less in common. The other, Figurative Surrealism, tended more toward the accurate, plastic representation of dreams and their imagery in paint. Here, Picasso, Ernst, Magritte, Delvaux, and particularly Dali must be recognized as the modern forefathers of contemporary Visionary art. From these we arrive at the source.

In the aftermath of Second World War, the misinterpretation of Surrealism led a group of academy painters in Vienna to eventually create the movement now recognized as Fantastic Realism. Hausner and Hutter, Lehmden and Brauer, and particularly Ernst Fuchs, sought to revive old master’s techniques of painting, combine it with Impressionist colour theories, and dedicate this new finesse and precision to fantastic subjects. In this elite group was contemporary Visionary art given birth.

As many of these painters are still alive today, they have become recognized as first generation Visionaries. Included among this generation of painters, but working more independently, are also Ernst Steiner, Peter Proksch, and Wolfgang Grasse.

Of his art Fuchs states, “I have always been drawn towards things which man cannot see from the exterior. And I have always practiced a kind of art which depicts things that, otherwise, man only sees in his dreams or hallucinations. For me, the threshold has to be crossed from inner images to their expression in wakeful being – the transformation of dreams and fantasy into the world of reality and its plane of visual imagery.” [xi]

Of Surrealism and Fantastic Realism, two things must be noted. Firstly, that the Surrealists primary concern was with the dream-state. ‘Surrealism’ is the umbrella term under which Visionary art is often conflated, but the latter does not give the same predominance exclusively to dreams as does the former. Secondly, that where the Surrealists were primarily inspired by Freud’s writings on dreams, the Fantastic Realists, from which Visionary art is born, were more influenced by Jung, particularly his work concerning the Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. And so, while the early dream-works of Dali manifest much of the repressed sexual imagery uncovered by Freud, the fantastic works of the early Fuchs, by contrast, revealed the sacred images of alchemy which Jung taught in his dream studies.

Under the expert guidance of Fuchs, a second generation emerged in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, practising (what Max Doerner called) the Mischtechnik, as taught to them by Fuchs. A direct link is traced from here through Fuchs to Mati Klarwein, De Es Schwertberger, and Robert Venosa. During this period other students of Fuchs organized movements and became teachers of the technique: Brigid Marlin (member of Inscape and founder of The Society of Art of the Imagination), Philip Rubinov-Jacobson (member of the New York Visionaries and organizer of the Old Masters/New Visions seminars), as well as Fuchs’ own son, Michael Fuchs. [xii]

Augustin Lesage, outsider artist

Of the same generation, but working more independently: Alex Grey constructed his series of Sacred Mirrors – anatomical paintings infused with subtle energies, informed by transpersonal philosophy and by many years of psychedelic exploration in the city morgue. In Switzerland, H. R. Giger harnessed the techniques of airbrushing to his aphotic visions of aliens, bio-mechaniod symbiosis, and the occult. Also exploring the shadow side of Visionary art at this time, in Norway and Poland, were Odd Nedrum and Zdzislaw Beksiński, whose individual yet resonant visions of archetypal beings inhabiting desolate and apocalyptic vistas continue to inspire contemporary masters, most notably in the work of Chet Zar and Jeremy Caniglia. Many of the Visionaries working in Europe during this period – Fuchs, Hausner, Giger, De Es, Venosa – crossed the Atlantic and were introduced to a broader American audience by the magazine Omni.

Contemporary with this was the rediscovery of l’Art Brut, Outsider art – untrained artists whose psychomimetic style was expressed in imagery strikingly similar to the more calculated works of Visionary artists. These include the water-colours of Heinrich Nüssbaum, the apocalyptic landscapes of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, and the work of Augustin Lesage, whose detailed patterns set within a surrounding ‘negative space’ have resonated strongly into Visionary art. Many of these works have been documented through Raw Vision magazine. The parallel emergence of Juxtapoz magazine in California, championed by Robert Williams, and later of Hi Fructose, has widened the context in which Visionary art proper may be understood.

Through a synthesis with other media and disciplines, Visionary art has expanded beyond the art world to give birth to an international Visionary culture. Grass-roots groups including Pod Collective, Elfintome, and UK based Lila, have been instrumental in this, establishing Visionary galleries at music festivals and cultural events worldwide.

“Through a synthesis with other media and disciplines, Visionary art has expanded beyond the art world to give birth to an international Visionary culture. Grass-roots groups including Pod Collective, Elfintome, and UK based Lila, have been instrumental in this, establishing Visionary galleries at music festivals and cultural events worldwide.”

Included in these is the Entheon Village at Burning Man in Nevada, spearheaded by Alex Grey and US organisation MAPS [xiii]; and the Visionary art gallery in the Liminal Village at Boom festival. In Boom is the leading synthesis achieved, with Visionary art forming the backdrop and context for ground-breaking electronic music and mixed-media disciplines, all underpinned by a sustainability ethos based on the pioneering theories of permaculture.

Alex Grey has opened his art up further into the music world with his collaborations with rock band Tool; and his collaboration with transpersonal philosopher Ken Wilber has led to a fusion with modern academia and a thriving multi-disciplinary lecture circuit where Robert Venosa and Martina Hoffman are to be found speaking alongside leading psychologists, writers and scientists, including Stan Grof, Ralph Metzner and (in years gone) Robert Anton Wilson. Alex Grey is also an ambassador for Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Mars 1, a contemporary painter straddling visionary and pop surrealism.

Visionary art has organised itself into a flourishing and integrated global community. Those at the forefront of the contemporary scene include – but are certainly not exhausted by – Oleg Korolev in Russia, Maura Holden in the USA, Peter Gric in Austria, Satoshi Sakamoto in Japan, Kuba Fiedorowicz in Australia, and Laurence Caruana in France. Jon Beinart’s Surreal Art Collective at beinart.com has provided international artists with a central hub through which to promote and share their work, and has been instrumental in a number of collaborative international exhibitions. UK-based Daniel Mirante’s www.lila.info has charted and explored the movement and associated artists since 2000ad. Canadian Delvin Solkinson has been instrumental in organising and presenting visionary art to an international audience through publications and the Galactic Trading Card oracle complex.

In America the Visionary art scene remains rooted predominantly in California, with Robert Venosa basing himself between Colorado and his spiritual home in Cadaquez, Spain, where he studied under Dali; and Alex Grey working independently to build the Temple of Sacred Mirrors in upstate New York. The Cannibal Flower exhibitions, hosted by various galleries across Los Angeles, have given the opportunity for upcoming artists to exhibit alongside more established names, and the ‘Temple of Visions’ gallery, a huge space on downtown Gallery Row, opened opposite Hive in spring 2010, proudly “bridging International Visionary Culture and the Los Angeles Art World”[ [xiv] Large collective Visionary art exhibitions have been held recently in Germany, Spain and Amsterdam; France hosts the Chimera Visionary art festival. The UK is notable for lagging so far behind this international movement.

For 20,000 years our ancient ancestors committed themselves to the development of a visual language through which to express the bewildering and the incomprehensible.

Speaking of his role as an artist, Robert Venosa states, “I believe I’ve figured out that my true purpose in the scheme of things is to act as a translator – in the language of form and color… allowing the artist, and the viewer, access to the infinite iconography.” [xv]

In Visionary art this ancient spirit endures.

The mainstream art establishment, however, has been reluctant to acknowledge Visionary art. Nowhere is this truer than in London, where an aloof hyper-modernism has rendered the Visionary artist stranded. Certainly this is in part due to widespread ignorance of the Visionary artists’ ancestry and pedigree that grant her a rightful place on the contemporary scene. Probably it is also because the establishment is yet to fully grasp the extent to which Visionary art is a coherent and flourishing international movement. But most likely it is due to incorrect and uninformed assumptions over what classifies a work of art as ‘Visionary’ – the misconception centring on the notion that the term refers predominantly to subject matter. This leads to cynical and misinformed associations between Visionary art and New Age-tinted depictions of fairies, dolphin consciousness, alien abduction and crystal healing. These do not make an artwork Visionary. It is not what is portrayed that matters, it is how.

The hidden prime.

Fuchs speaks elusively of “a secret art whose traces I have discovered with almost all people and cultures, but also in nature itself, there where the primeval world appears.” [xvi] The nucleus of this secret art is a shared grammar, ‘ein verschollener Stil’, which both distinguishes the Visionary artist from her contemporaries and betrays her ancestry. This secret grammar is the unifying factor that underpins the bewildering diversity of the genre.

Fuchs speaks elusively of “a secret art whose traces I have discovered with almost all people and cultures, but also in nature itself, there where the primeval world appears.” The nucleus of this secret art is a shared grammar, ‘ein verschollener Stil’, which both distinguishes the Visionary artist from her contemporaries and betrays her ancestry. This secret grammar is the unifying factor that underpins the bewildering diversity of the genre.

From a technical point of view, Visionary artists are unified in their tastes, temperament and preference. Though their methods differ – Venosa and Fuchs preferring classical techniques of oil and varnish, Giger the airbrush, Lipton and McFadden ink and pencil, and others including Luke Brown the graphic potentialities of computers – all demonstrate a commitment to an exactingly precise rendering of their vision. Fine lines, gradual transitions, infinite subtlety, mystifying detail – these are the hallmarks of the Visionary artist.
Why such intricate detail? Why such precision?

Speaking for the Fantastic Realists, Fuchs relates that “From the beginning we wanted to re-animate the craftsmanship of the Old Masters. But, more than that, we wanted to depict the fantastic image in such a way as if it were painted, not by hand, but by the dream itself, leaving no trace of the craftsmanship behind.” [xvii]

De Es expands on this idea: “In these early works, I avoided anything which could look like a brushstroke. The onlookers always wondered how it was done. They were really quite mystified. That sort of response made me feel very good about my work, because that is how I perceived existence. There are no brushstrokes in life, and only the creator knows how it is done. I am left mystified.” [xviii]

In Visionary art we find a dedication to seamless detail and precision of form, a subtlety of technique that renders the medium as translucent as possible, so that the image is presented immediately to the viewer. There is a self-emptying that is reminiscent of the Zen painters of the Orient. Just as the Zen painter sits quietly before nature, perhaps before a bird or flower, and allows the spirit of the object to flow through him onto the paper, so too the Visionary artist makes themselves transparent to their vision, so that it may flow unchanged through them and onto the paper – only unlike the Zen painters, they express the vision through an exacting technique of exquisite detail and precision that is rooted in a thousand years of Western tradition. In so doing, the Visionary artist permits the artwork autonomy, leaving behind little trace of her role as its author.

Nowhere is this commitment more recognisable than in those artists choosing drawing as their preferred medium within the genre. Of these we name the light-infused etchings of Gustave Doré and William Blake, of Ernst and Michael Fuchs, early Kris Kuksi, the deeply representational drawings of Laurie Lipton (which place her on the very fringe but certainly within the Visionary tradition), and the art of Breck Outland, Daniel Freedman, Bethan McFadden, Dariusz Zawadzki, and Michel de Saint Ouen, amongst many others.

Gustave Doré completed illustrations in Visionary style to The Divine Comedy (particularly The Inferno), Don Quixote; and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. In these he developed an accented expression based upon light and form. His technical style, in which a unified work emerges from countless tiny marks, finds expression in the contemporary scene in Laurie Lipton.

Laurie Lipton

“My imagery is savage but my technique is extremely controlled,” Lipton recounts, before lamenting, “It’s so much harder to sell a drawing, when I started out all the galleries said, ‘Do colour or we won’t show you and you won’t be able to make a living.’” [xix]

If the mainstream art world is slow to recognise Visionary art, then to draw within the genre presents the artist with a double challenge.

Yet in choosing a medium where colour is absent, the artist is free to explore their subject in depth through Doré’s lens of light and form. Of her work, Lipton states, “It’s like a Diane Arbus photograph: monochrome makes it stark, it feels frozen in time. There’s an atmosphere to black and white which I like: it’s the colour of ghosts, of memories and ancient photographs… And it’s also much harder to do.” [xx]

The distinction between black and white can serve to draw apart other polarities, while paradoxically unveiling their underlying interrelation. In a pencil drawing, light and shadow are interdependent – only through shades of darkness can light be understood; without light there is no boundary to shadow. These two, light and shadow, give birth to form. Light and shadow anticipate and precede form. In this sense, drawing is the most immediate of all the visual arts – drawing is an exploration of the foundation upon which all visual art is based.

The interdependence of light and shadow form the context in which other polarities may be explored – those of life and death, animal and human, physical and spiritual, organic and mechanical, heaven and hell.

HR Giger

H.R. Giger, maestro of a ’symphony of blacks’, exploited this to explore the polarities of organic and mechanical. Giger shows us female human figures in fearful symbiosis with cold mechanical beings; the organic arising amidst an industrial underworld, never able to escape it. Giger states that he “established certain connections in the architecture of the human body on the one hand and in the technological world on the other.” [xxi] The absence of colour acts to highlight the stark distance between these polarities, while the inherent interdependence of light and shadow unveil a hidden ambiguity and underlying unity.

Jerwood Drawing Prize judge Paul Thomas states this as the key criteria in assessing any artwork – “Is the language appropriate for the subject?” [xxii]

The Visionary artist speaks a grammar of exacting detail and subtlety. Whether the subject is the emergence of consciousness from the seamless unity of the organic world, or the liquid landscape of dreams, memories, and archetypes, the vision is expressed in a language that allows all authority and primacy to remain with the artwork. This lucidity is an artistic temperament that reaches back to Hildegard of Bingen, is given genius in Hieronymus Bosch, honed and mastered in William Blake and Gustave Moreau, and finds full expression in the modern masters of the art.

The challenge of an art establishment preoccupied with the deconstruction of modern trends is to demonstrate the validity and authenticity of such a temperament. To penetrate the aloofness of such an establishment requires a deep-rooting in ancestry that allows the Visionary artist both to anchor themselves in history and to justify their position on the contemporary scene.

To penetrate the aloofness of the modern art establishment requires a deep-rooting in ancestry that allows the Visionary artist both to anchor themselves in history and to justify their position on the contemporary scene.

Even the masters found this a challenge. Ernst Fuchs speaks of the difficulty he had at the beginning of his career in rooting his art in an authentic context. It was only later, when he began to master his craft, that he discovered his true ancestry, “scattered through many countries, they were members, as I understood it, of a secret lodge: the Masonic Order of Visionaries.” [xxiii]

This ‘invisible tribe’ is the same that has been working for centuries, often in isolation and ignorance of one another, to elucidate and expand the visual language that was initiated by our primordial ancestors. They have done so through a shared grammar, ‘ein verschollener Stil’, which underpins and justifies their vision.

De Es summarises the Visionary project: “Reading the story of the universe backwards is our method of reaching the beginning. We encounter all the images which form and direct our wants, needs, and urges imprinted on the core of our mind. We discover pictures there, as if carved from stone, prevailing through time and revealing what powers are holding the world together. If we could read these pictures, our vision would grow clear. We would find ourselves at the bottom of everything – holding it all together.” [xxiv]

In Visionary art, the artist has come full circle to apply a contemporary technique, honed and mastered over a long Western tradition, to illuminate a visual language rooted in our ancient prehistory. This is Ur-Sprache, the primal language, a language born in the caverns of pre-conceptual darkness. This is a language that precedes speech, a language given form tens of thousands of years before the word. The word may fail – may strain, crack and sometimes break, under the burden, under the tension, slip, slide, perish, and decay with imprecision – yet, where the word fails, Visionary art presents us with a language in which the image endures.

Rob Percival 2010
http://tetrahension.com

Bibliography

[1] Ernst Fuchs, Architectura Caelestis, 1966
[2] Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, 2009
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Pierre-Louis Mathieu (ed.) Un Ouvrier Assembleur de Reves, Gustave,1991
[6] This ancestry is not without its own bloodline, being descendent of L. Caruna’s Visionary Manifesto, 2001, which should be recognised as the patriarch of writings on Visionary art.
[7] See Richard Lacayo The Master of Us All: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1881981,00.html
[8] Quoted in Alex Grey – Sacred Mirrors, Introduction by Ken Wilber, 1990
[9] Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. See: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/blake_ma.html
[10] This Visionary nexus is further indebted to Caruana
[11] Ernst Fuchs, Im Zeichen der Sphinx, DTV verlag, (L. Caruna translation)
[12] See: Caruana, http://visionaryrevue.com/webtext/longman1.html
[13] See: MAPS, http://maps.org/ For further psychonaughtical exploration, see: Erowid, http://www.erowid.org/
[14] See: Temple of Visions, http://templeofvisions.com/
[15] See: Reality Sandwich, http://www.realitysandwich.com/slideshow/robert_venosa
[16] Ernst Fuchs, Architectura Caelestis,1966
[17] Ernst Fuchs, Im Zeichen der Sphinx, DTV verlag, (L. Caruna translation)
[18] De Es, Heavy Light, Morpheus International, 1993
[19] Interview with Tony Thorne, The Extraordinary Drawings of Laurie Lipton, 2009
[20] Ibid.
[21] H.R. Giger, Necronomicon, 1978
[22] See: http://www.jerwoodvisualarts.org/uploads/documents/Who%20would%20be%20a%20selector.pdf
[23] Ernst Fuchs, Fuchs de Draeger, Draeger Editeur, 1977
[24] De Es, Heavy Light, Morpheus International, 1993

Her “large, luminous paintings glow with secrets” and show a deep reverence for the magic and mystery of creation and the interconnectedness of all life.

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Much of her work shows the inter-relationship of humanity with the plant, animal and spirit realms, blending the microscopic and macrocosmic worlds into a unique colourful presence, where ancient primal magic blends with vibrant new frequencies.

Working in a very intuitive way, the images are channelled directly onto the canvas, bringing forms into manifestation that shapeshift across the canvas and connect us to the sacred ways of nature, spirit, truth and beauty.

Yvonne’s inspiration comes through dreams and visions, shamanic journeying, music and sound, from inner worlds and rich life experiences.

The creative force finds expression through painting, the creation of ceremonial tools, clothing and adornments. Always finding new ways of sharing visions and inspiring others on the path of healing, transformation, beauty, wholeness and celebration.

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When did you start developing an interest in art and what have been the major catalysts to your flowering as an artist ?

Mia:
Well, since I was a very small child I’ve had an obsession with drawing—both, my twin sister and I. Apparently, we would put toys aside for a crayon and a piece of paper. I was greatly encouraged by family, classmates, and teachers alike throughout grade school, so there was never any question in my mind that I wanted to pursue art. Reading storybooks, watching cartoons, and Disney animated films were a huge inspiration to me growing up, and I wanted desperately to become an animator when I was in high school. At around 15, I took my first formal art class— figure drawing over the summer at Art Center. It was a bit overwhelming, because I’d never been in a class where everyone was artistic. It was also terribly exciting, because it was my first time on a college campus that was entirely dedicated to art. The idea that I could study art institutionally was riveting, because I was used to the occasional craft or hobby-painting sort of art class up until that point. And of course, then there was Otis, which pretty much shaped my artistic development from the ground up.

The Four Seasons by Mia

You mention storybooks and disney cartoons. Your work does carry a strong narrative element, a compression of events and mythologies into a single instant. How do you feel the images come to you?

Mia:
It’s all rather spontaneous. My ideas first come in the form of words though, which I write down sporadically, usually while I’m working on another piece. When I’m ready to begin working on the new piece, I gather my notes and start sketching from the words I have written. Sometimes I’ll get stuck and have to put it aside for another day, and other times it just flows. I keep many reference folders full of images and am constantly looking through them. Tumblr is always on my homepage so that I start the day looking at random images. I sketch random observations to be sorted through later. All of the elements and details in my pieces reflect my interests and sometimes serve to document certain phases of fascination with various subjects. For example, I had an astronomy phase some months ago, and now I’m in a bit of a sculpture phase. Those things make their way into the pieces as just another way of communicating and interpreting the story that I’m trying to tell.

How would you like to see your art unfolding in the future?

I have so much to learn…I don’t think I’ve even scraped the surface yet. As far as technical skills go, I want to soak up as much as I possibly can and eventually try other media like oils, watercolor, and even digital. I have a lot to learn about myself, so I am always trying to explore new ideas, concepts, and subjects for my fine art work. I would also like to write and illustrate my own stories someday. Much farther down the line, I’d love to blend other art forms with my work (such as animation, sculpture, or even performance), whether that means collaborating with other artists, or learning new disciplines myself. As you can see, I have many dreams, but I have the rest of my life to busy myself with, so I want to keep things fresh and interesting.

Visit http://art-by-mia.com/