#visionaryart

"The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun," William Blake, c. 1805.

Blake (1757-1827) was one of the great visionary artists of all time. Both his paintings and poetry were hugely influential on the Romantic movement. He was a friend of Thomas Paine, although he had his disagreements with both the American and French revolutions, and was also involved in mysticism. He had his own idiosyncratic beliefs, and even today biographers have a hard time classifying his spirituality; it was definitely Christian but also rejected the Church of England and any other recognized denomination.

This is one of a series of illustrations he did as part of a commission to illustrate the Bible. Here, he depicts Revelations 12, which mentions a "great red dragon."

Blake is a fascinating and diverse character I need to learn much more about. He had a fervent religiosity about him, but was also a believer in free love and rejected many of Christianity's ideas of virtue and chastity. His poetry involved various revisions of the traditional creation story. He was also a huge influence on the Beat Generation and some feel his idea prefigure Karl Jung's ideas of the psyche. In other words, there's a lot going on there.

From the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

#Art #VisionaryArt #Romanticism #WilliamBlake

A Romantic watercolor, featuring a Satanic figure, with wings and a tail, horns and cloven hooves, mostly black but with red accents and highlights, hovers over an angelic woman, seated on a crescent moon and with broad wings. She is dressed in white with fiery hair, and she looks up at him with alarm. Jagged lines, like lightning bolts, flank them.

Jul 16, 2025, 00:53 · · 1 · 0

MorganAmethyst @MorganXAmethyst@disabled.social

Atm there is soo many good things are happening in my life and it feels great but overwhelming this painting expresses exactly how I feel like something stagnant is starting to flow
#spiritualart #abstractart #digitalpainting #visionaryart #procreate

Jul 11, 2025, 17:22 · · 0 · 0

Hotspur @Vagrarian@vivaldi.net

"The Ten Largest, Group IV No. 2, Childhood," Hilma af Klint, 1907.

Here's our old friend Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), doing what she does best...giving us beautiful if enigmatic Abstract art.

She painted her own intense spiritual and occult visions, and didn't leave behind much interpretive material, so we're left only to guess at what she was getting at. The title refers to childhood, and the flower images perhaps echo a child's fascination with nature.

I'm amused by the two flower images formed of teardrop shapes, something that became a hugely popular design in the 1960s, here over a half-century ahead of its time!

Klint left her art to a nephew when she died, with instructions to not open them or look at them for 20 years. He had no clue what to expect when he looked at her work, which by then was fully in the Abstract tradition. Now she is regarded as the first true Abstract painter.

From a private collection.

#Art #WomenArtists #HilmaAfKlint #AbstractArt #MysticalArt #VisionaryArt