Thresholds/ Held + Holding/ Envelope
Two years ago, I flew to New York, drove straight to the Guggenhiem Museum and spent six hours absorbing the exhibit of Hilma af Klint’s retrospective, Paintings for the Future. There was an addendum made to art history rightfully crediting Hilma with the origination of abstract art, a full decade before Kandinsky and his contemporaries.
Af Klint’s work was guided by the metaphysical world. She and a group of women called “The Five”, would meditate together and receive information from a source they called “The High Masters”. During these meditations, the High Masters asked Hilma to create “The Great Commission”. These works, ranging in the hundreds, employed mysticism, alchemy, divine geometry, symbolism from all the world’s religions, along with her own language. This language was meticulously and lovingly documented in a legend and glossary of terms. They were a download from the divine.
I flew home that same night and started painting.
Having been raised in a metaphysical household, these works not only spoke to me, but validated my unorthodox childhood that included immersions into the Baha'i faith and Wicca to celestial phenomena and ghost busting. Her work makes sense of the teachings and rituals that were apart of my upbringing, an upbringing that I could not share with anyone in the world beyond my immediate family. Her work made me feel less alone. Af Klint’s art encouraged me to find the deeper meaning of colors and contour - movement and composition. She has helped me to integrate my spiritual beliefs as symbolism and their relationship to the human form.
Af Klint has taught me how to balance the spiritual world with the physical, and how, as an artist, I belong inside of it.