Visual essay: female artists paint the otherworld
Art from Hildegard of Bingen, Hilma af Klint, Agnes Pelton, Leonora Carrington, and more
Some housekeeping: I’m travelling next week and will take a week off publishing this newsletter. I’ll turn off paid subscriptions so nobody will be charged while I’m gone. Thanks for your patience!
I’ve been writing to you for months now about the female mystics—the women through history who have had direct experience of the divine or an otherworld, and who then wrote about those experiences.
But here’s the thing: mystic experience can’t really be expressed in words—at least, not in prose that aims to be descriptive and factual. Every mystic you read will admit this at some point (though it rarely stops them from trying).
Descriptive prose is linear, whereas mystical experience is everything and everywhere and all at once.
So is there another way?
Well, yes. Several, in fact. There’s poetry and music and there’s a whole conversation to be had about why and how these forms might be better pitched to recreate the mystical than prose—but we’ll get into that another time.
And then there’s painting. Over the years, mystics have gifted us precious visual renderings of what they’ve seen and felt when they crossed over to the other side. Unlike prose and even poetry and music, these paintings can go some way towards truly communicating the visual experience of these transcendent moments.
And so, several months into this study of the mystics, it strikes me that we might be in need of some visuals. We might need to see just what it is that we’ve been circling all this time.
Here’s a smattering of such pictures. This should be obvious, but this is by no means an exhaustive collection. It’s simply a handful of the images that most grab me personally; the ones I return to time and again. These are pictures that merit some real sitting-with, so I’d encourage you to stay with the images instead of my words.
If you’re interested in learning more about female artists and the beyond, I recommend Jennifer Higgie’s book The Other Side.
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That’s all from me for now. If you enjoyed this post, I’d love it if you clicked the little heart button below.
See you in two weeks.
Love,
xx Ellie
Thanks Ellie. Love this. Love you. Let’s book a date for a painting session xxx