For the last 50 years of postmodern contemporary art the number one biggest taboo has been… Spiritual Art.
Since humans arrived on this planet our survival depended on nature. We realized that nature was linked to the divine, and we made ritual art on cave walls to honor this source. Spiritual art continued in illustration of Goddess worship, Egyptian gods, Hindu texts, and creation stories and ritual devotion from every culture.
With the rise of the Chrisitian Catholic church during the Byzantine era Icons were used as focus for contemplation. The Renaissance artists looked to the ancient Greeks for inspiration. To make a living as an artist your only patron was the church, so you had to make religious art. The Baroque and Rococo period was a time of more affluent patrons other than the church. They wanted frivolity, joy and portraits of themselves. Art moved away from religious themes. The pre-Raphaelites, British nature painters, as well as founders of modern art like Kandinsky and Chaggall kept spiritual art alive. But eventually modern art rejected spiritual art as a religious relic of the past.
The taboo of spiritual art is changing. Today as artists are starting to express personal issues of diversity, gender, race equality, women’s issues, and human rights, so too are artists ‘coming out’ and showing us the spiritual side of our nature. The pandemic forced us to stop and look inside. Spiritual art comes from the soul that inhabits our physical body. Spiritual art can be abstract, nature scenes, humorous, joyful, figurative, whatever style or media, as long as it comes from your soul.
This is the most exciting time for art in all of history. Painting is finally flourishing again in contemporary art. There are more women artists than ever before, and they are showing work in galleries, exhibitions and museums around the world. As well as artists of color, race and diversity. This has been long overdue. The public can now experience art emotionally on a personal level rather than an elite intellectual concept. At last art is universal as it should be.
We all search for the meaning of life. For me my art must be meaningful, otherwise it’s a waste of my time. I guess you could say my paintings are visions, I see them in another consciousness. They are intuitive, not planned out, sketched or designed. I just start painting, and then it paints itself. My paintings are like portals. The figure makes you stop for a moment and pulls you in. However, the figure is not the subject! The subject is a movement, a dance into higher consciousness. A celebration of universal love. An expression of the divine love beaming across the universe that has created all of us, and all of this.
Michael Pruden