Spiritual Inspiration: Paintings of the Soul

Note: this article was created as part of a large project for DONT WRITE, the annual publication for Scotland’s largest fashion show DONT WALK. I worked as an editorial assistant for this publication for one year.

Throughout DONT WALK's history, great art has served as a foundational influence. One painting can inspire the whole show, and one artist can become a muse for the entire year's events and artistic outputs.This year, Creative Director Allegra Tenenbaum has based her vision on two often overlooked, yet magnificent artists: Hilma af Klint (born 1862) and Agnes Pelton (born 1881). Both active in the early 20th century, their relationships with the spiritual and natural created visual sensations of colour, light, and geometry in their paintings. Af Klint and Pelton have re-emerged into modern pop culture through expansive exhibitions at the Guggenheim and Whitney, respectively. Their legacy lives far beyond their years, breaking into modern movements of painting, photography, film, and even, fashion.

While both artists were active during the same period, it is unlikely they would have been influenced, or even aware, of each other's work. Still, there are many similarities between their paintings. The most obvious correlation between the two was their mutual interest in Theosophy, led by Russian-born Madame Blavatsky. This was a movement which concerned making contact with the spirit world, a practice which didn’t necessarily negate any religion (Pelton was a lifelong Christian). Hilma af Klint began contacting spirits at 18, especially influenced by the idea after the death of her sister. She connected with a group of other female artists who would perform seances together, calling themselves ‘the Five’. Many of af Klint’s works are inspired by her connection with the spiritual world. In ‘Paintings for the Temple’, she is prompted by a spiritual master to fill the adorned and holy walls of a conceptual temple with art. The size and style of the pieces produced speak to af Klint’s ability as a medium of spiritual energy. She remarked on this transference of ideas through her in one of her notebooks, writing:

“The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless, I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brushstroke.”

Meanwhile, Agnes Pelton’s spiritual journey moved further into the connection between her own soul and the world around her. It is perhaps for this reason that her work involves more tangible forms of expression than af Klint’s. Pelton regularly features mountains, sand dunes, clouds, and flowers in her paintings, whereas af Klint’s body of work largely consists of completely abstract shapes. Pelton’s interest in the connection of soul, body, and environment brought her to the desert in Cathedral City, California where she also practised Agni yoga. Her focus on interior experience in her painting is expressed as she writes :

“these pictures are like little windows opening to the view of a region not yet much visited consciously or by intention – an inner realm rather than an outer landscape”

The spirituality explored in both artists’ work turned the practice of painting into a meditative exercise – a way to articulate their relationship with a transcendental world. While both worked on other paintings to make an income (commissioned landscapes and portraits), they expressed their true soul on canvases which were kept to themselves. Both unconcerned with fame or fortune, their pieces speak to an interior experience of tranquillity, strength, and extravagance. Moreover, they both used abstraction to connect with their own lived experiences. Af Klint’s series ‘The Ten Largest’, in her own words,' describe the path of the soul from the beginning of the spectacle of life to its end’, while Pelton’s sensational paintings of the desert speak of her own experience in her new world of California, where she wrote that:

‘The vibration of this light, the spaciousness of these skies enthralled me. I knew there was a spirit in nature as in everything else, but here in the desert it was an especially bright spirit.’

Pelton makes herself distinct through these paintings, and as an artist, with her preoccupation with light. In ‘Orbits’, the multicoloured arcs each star moves through on the canvas are characterised by their brightness against a dark sky. Meanwhile, in ‘Sand Storm’, which was the first painting she made after moving to the Californian desert, the sun mixes together clouds and dust to form a central rainbow. While Hilma af Klint is a vessel for the spirits, Pelton is a vehicle for light, transforming its message through visual sensation. She once wrote :

“I feel somewhat like the keeper of a little lighthouse, the beam of which goes farther than I know, and illumines for others more than I can see.”

Similarly, Hilma af Klint stands apart in her own way – not just with her measured geometry and figuration, but also with her own language. Her art communicates a world of symbols and shapes which all had their own meanings, according to her notes. A spiral represents evolution, a swan defines the ethereal. No image was made without intention behind it, and they each had to be understood in the context of their painted environments. These thoughtful paintings take up an unusual amount of space; they cover walls and dominate rooms. Indeed, each painting demands multiple outlooks; meant to be viewed intimately close to appreciate every detail and symbol, as well as from a long distance to see the full picture.

Despite their obvious impact on the art world, both artists remained almost completely obscured up to and after their deaths. This means the last century of art history has been written without them, instead showcasing artists like Kandinsky, Malevich, and Talin as pioneers of the abstraction movement.

For af Klint, this was no accident, as she chose to keep her work unrecognised. Even after painting over 1,200 pieces, none of them left the studio while she was alive. Instead, she entrusted her nephew Eric to release her work at least twenty years after her death. She knew her paintings were for a time beyond herself, and she was right. It wasn’t until a group exhibition in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1986 that her work was revealed to the world 42 years after her death. Only in the past decade have her paintings began to be truly appreciated by the public, with a sweeping Guggenheim exhibit in 2018 and a biopic released in 2022.

Likewise, Pelton’s re-emergence into pop culture was motivated by individual curators who saw the talent in her work and pushed for it to be seen. A 2009 exhibition curated by Karen Moss featured Pelton's work alongside Georgia O'Keefe, an artist Pelton has been compared to constantly as they shared the same teacher and preoccupation with the desert. It revealed to the world that Pelton could compete with the legendary artist, especially in her use of transcendental colour and evocative shapes. Pelton was a master of the visual, expressing how “painting is the art of visualisation, and colour its essential means of expression.” This exhibition was a turning point in perceptions, pushing the public to see Pelton in a league of her own, away from comparisons with af Klint and O’Keefe. No one worked with light the way she did, no one else dared to illustrate the shapes of the universe in such a gentle manner.

The visions of af Klint and Pelton are heavily incorporated within DONT WALK 2023. Each decision has been inspired by not only their visual masterpieces, but the spirit of their characters. A photoshoot's theme is not only determined by the models and the clothes they wear, but by specific art. In the first photoshoot shown, the contrasts in colours, shapes, and beings from af Klint’s ‘The Swan (No. 17)’ is reflected through the lighting, positioning, and dressing of the scene. In the next picture, af Klint’s early botanical drawings and Pelton’s natural landscapes are transformed into a forest setting, engulfing the models in colour and light.

The final show, titled ‘ASCENT’, takes its theme from Agnes Pelton’s 1946 painting of the same name. Also known as ‘Liberation’, the symbolic artwork forms itself around a diamond of bright, purple smoke rising above hills into a giant yellow sun. The image is wrapped in layers of pastel smoke clouds, blending each shape and colour into one another. As its name suggests, it is a depiction of freedom, of finally rising towards brightness, literally as light as air. The show takes this painting into its core, basing each element off of these essential ideas.

After spending this year within their creative legacy, we can definitively say that there was no one like Agnes Pelton. Just like there was no one like Hilma af Klint. Their lives and creations left legacies that will inspire generations, the same way they inspired us.