Georgiana Houghton was a British female artist who quickly became a spiritualist medium who used her art to express her visions.
Spiritualism is a religion which got it's modern day start in Hydesdale, NY, in March 1848, (now the town of Lily Dale), the home of Spiritualism. It came into fashion ushered in by Emanual Swedenborg who was a famous seer. The basics of Spiritualism is that it proves that there is life after death. It has become a way for psychic mediums to worship a monotheistic God, the Creator, live by Natural Law principles and still practice Mediumship because they believe the spirits they contact were once incarnated as humans - not aliens, elementals, and gods and goddesses of Wicca.
Georgiana Houghton studied classical drawing and painting but fell in with a group of the new Spiritualists. She was really connected to her Muse, and began to channel Spiritual drawings and paintings during seances.
Her first pictures included realistic images which she had learned in her upper class art training - faces and figures, but as she gained confidence, she went completely abstract.
She produced automatic drawings, which means her hand was guided by spiritual influences during séances.
This technique was claimed by the Surrealists a few years later. By experimenting with her artistic style, she ended up creating completely abstract images, close to 60 years before Kandinsky and Malevich, Houghton’s choice to work with abstract shapes correlates with the unnatural nature of her subject.
She depicted objects of a spiritual experience. “Abstraction” was not yet a concept in the 19th century, which explains the mixed reviews her watercolors got. The public didn’t know how to interpret her style. The different shapes and colors in the images are a part of the her “sacred symbolism”, they all have a different meaning. As her career progressed, her images gained in complexity. She added an increasing number of layers, colors and small details. She was quite ahead of her time.
She was way ahead of her time - and a female at that.
I had never heard of her until this last three days when I discovered Spiritualism because I tried to research Harold Sharp who "invented" the Auragraph.
I have been channeling paintings since 1989, but have never stumbled upon Spiritualism...
Not even in my Feminist Art programs in the 80s New York City, did I hear of these famous Spiritualist Artists.
I guess that they wanted to keep Spiritualism hidden. I remember a critic and professor of mine, Donald Kuspit, commenting about how the Spirit and been driven out of art in the 80s, New York. https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n1/gallery/kuspit_d/reconsidering_text.htm
These works were way ahead of their time.
The one weird and interesting thing I have seen about Spiritualist Art today is that it is ALL portraits of Spirit Guides...
There is nothing but "Auragraphs" done the way I showed in my previous post that is done - Nothing like the work I do...
I get the feeling that the Spiritualists have gotten stuck in their ways of doing things and only view Auragraphs and
Spirit Portraits as relevant. This is mainly to do with wanting to make sure that people believe their doctrine, that ONLY
spirits of dead people are talking to them - nothing else... and this is probably where I am going to not want to get involved
because it is so strict "who" they are talking to...
Or that they don't believe that formerly incarnate spirits would be trying to council my clients - it's either former loved ones of the client - ie Mediumship, or auragraphs the way they were taught by whomever - even though the modern Auragraphs are nothing like those of Harold Sharp, they do tell a progressive story, in a circle or other shapes, but nothing free flowing.