60s & Further
Visionary Art Bookstore I

William Blake, Alex Grey, Michael Parks, Frank Howell, Johfra Bosschart


Welcome to the
Visionary Art Bookstore

What a trip to revisit all these artists I/You have loved through the years,
from our childhood and adolescense -and as adults (ooohh-No!),
and the new artists we have been discovering .
Our compilation is not complete by any means, there are so many we love.
This could have gone on for weeks, so keep checking back for new additions.

I have added my favorite Victorian artists, Masters and our favorite Surrealist's
who have gifted us with their paintings of sensual mythology and abstract surreal lunacy,
I consider them visionary artists, I always have. I hope you will agree. Please visit our
Visionary Art Bookstore 2.

Like music, all art to us is eternal,
and carry's that eternal vibration-
what was beautiful 2000 years ago
can still be beautiful now.

Please enjoy your visit

LionHeart
July 2009

Visionary Art

Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world
and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual
or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.
Both trained and self-taught (or outsider) artists have,
and continue to create visionary works.
Many visionary artists are actively engaged in spiritual practices,
and some have drawn inspiration from psychedelic experiences.
Walter Schurian, professor at the University of Munster,
is quick to point out the difficulties in describing visionary art
as if it were a discrete genre,
since "it is difficult to know where to start and where to stop.
Recognized trends have all had their fantastic component,
so demarcation is apt to be fuzzy."

Despite this ambiguity, there does seem to be emerging some definition
to what constitutes the contemporary visionary art 'scene'
and which artists can be considered especially influential.
Contemporary visionary artists count Hieronymous Bosch, William Blake,
Morris Graves (of the Pacific Northwest School of Visionary Art),
Emil Bisttram, and Gustave Moreau amongst their antecedents.
Symbolism, Surrealism and Psychedelic art are also
direct precursors to contemporary visionary art.

The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism,
which includes Ernst Fuchs and Arik Brauer,
is also to be considered an important technical
and philosophical catalyst in its strong influence upon the
contemporary visionary culture.
It may also be considered the European version,
with the names being interchangeable.
A number of the visionary artists have trained
under teachers from the Vienna school;
Mati Klarwein, Robert Venosa, Laurence Caruana,
A. Andrew Gonzalez and Philip Rubinov-Jacobson.
They have in turn brought these teachings to North America.
(Sourced by Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visionary_art)

Alex Grey
1953-

Alex Grey is an American artist specializing in
spiritual and psychedelic art (or visionary art)
that is sometimes associated with the New Age movement.
Grey is a Vajrayana practitioner.
His oeuvre spans a variety of forms including performance art,
process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and painting.
Grey is a member of the Integral Institute.
He is also on the board of advisors for the
Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics,
and is the Chair of Wisdom University's Sacred Art Department.
He and his wife Allyson Grey are the co-founders
of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors,
a non-profit institution supporting Visionary Culture in New York City.

Grey’s paintings can be described as a blend of sacred, visionary art and postmodern art.
He is best known for his paintings of glowing anatomical human bodies,
images that “x-ray” the multiple layers of reality.
His art is a complex integration of body, mind, soul, and spirit.
The Sacred Mirrors, a life-sized series of 21 paintings,
took 10 years to complete, and examines in detail the
physical and metaphysical anatomy of the individual.
"The inner body is meticulously rendered -
not just anatomically precise but crystalline in its clarity".

Many of his paintings include detailed representations of the
skeleton, nervous system, cardiovascular system, and lymphatic system.
Grey applies this multidimensional perspective to paint the universal human experience.
His figures are shown in positions such as
praying, kissing, copulating, pregnancy, birth and death.
His work incorporates many religious symbols, including
auras, chakras, and icons with geometric shapes and tessellations in
natural, industrial, and multicultural situations

Grey’s paintings are permeated with an intense and subtle light that is rare in art history.
“It is the light that is sublime in Grey’s oeuvre - which is the most important
innovation in religious light since the Baroque _
and that makes the mundane beings in them seem sublime,
in every realistic detail of their exquisite being”

(Sourced by http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grey)



Alex Grey Website
Chapel of Sacred Mirrors

Sacred Mirrors:
The Visionary Art of Alex Grey
by Alex Grey, Ken Wilber, Carlo McCormick

The Mission of Art
by Ken Wilber (Foreword), Alex Grey

Transfigurations
by Alex Grey

Visions
by Alex Grey

Artmind -
The Healing Power of Sacred Art
with Alex Grey
DVD


Michael Parkes
(1944- )
Michael Parkes (born in 1944 in Sikeston, Missouri)
is an American-born artist living in Spain
who is best known for work in the areas of fantasy art and magic realism.
He specializes in painting, stone lithography and sculpture.
Parkes' work is widely available in the form of
self published mass production poster prints and nine published books.

Parkes studied graphic art and painting at the University of Kansas.
His unique style evolved in isolation,
after a period in which he gave up the practice of art altogether
and went to India in search of philosophical illumination.

Early on, he painted in the generally abstract expressionist
style common among his teachers.
However, after his pause for reflection,
he began to draw and paint in a meticulous style of
detailed representation which enabled him to give
full expression to his inner world of images.

Parkes' mature style can be described as realistic in principle,
with magical subject matter, later works being characterized by magic realism.
Parkes has written that his style resulted from a study of the
esoteric doctrines of the East and the West,
and his imagery is drawn from a range of traditions
including the cabalistic and the tantric,
but embodied in forms from his own imagination
which are immediately accessible.
Here strange beasts encounter mysterious winged women,
good and evil fight out their immemorial conflict,
and in this weightless environment worlds are
unmade and remade nearer to the heart's desire.

As a student, Parkes was fascinated by various graphic processes,
and he later became proficient in the difficult medium
of the colour stone lithograph.
Many of his recent works have been produced as Aurographics,
limited edition giclée prints.

The World of Michael Parkes
by John Russell Taylor (Introduction), Maria Sedoff

The World of Michael Parkes Boxed Notecards
by Michael Parkes

Michael Parkes: Stone Lithographs-Bronze Sculptures 1982-1996
by John Russell Taylor (Introduction)

Parkes: Drawings and stone lithographs
by Michael Parkes

Michael Parkes
by Frans Duister (Introduction)





Frank Howell
(1937 - 1997)
Frank Howell Gallery

A well-known Southwest painter, print-maker and gallery owner,
Frank Howell created finely rendered,
etching like portraits of time-worn Native Americans.
His goal was to depict the dignity of his subjects.

Internationally known master artist Frank Howell of Santa Fe,
was multi-faceted, working in a wide variety of media,
including acrylics, lithographs, monotypes, watercolors,
oils, drawings, sculptures and limited-edition prints.

Born in Sioux City, Iowa, he received his
undergraduate degree from the University of Northern Iowa,
did graduate work at that university and the University of Iowa,
and studied at the Chicago Art Institute.
His work is widely exhibited in museums and galleries
throughout the world, and in numerous private and corporate collections.

Frank Howell was described as
"having the remarkable ability to make a person feel that,
for a moment in time,
they were the most important person in his life.
Understand that painting is a wonderful kind of mirror
that reflects the inner you, not your external appearance.
You will have a sense of a kind of timelessness,
a humanness the poetics in all things."

Images are the copyright of Frank Howell.
Images on this website are for educational and enjoyment purposes only.

The Art of Frank Howell
by Michael French

SHAMAN'S CIRCLE
by Nancy Wood

Spirit Walker
by Nancy Wood

DANCING MOONS
by Nancy Wood

The paintings used in the 'slideshow'-Courtesy of First People
American Indians
First People is a child friendly site about American Indians
and members of the First Nations.
1400+ legends, 400+ agreements and treaties,
10,000+ pictures, free clipart, Pueblo pottery,
American Indian jewelry, Native American Flutes and more.

William Blake
(1757-1827)

"I must create my own system or be enslaved by another man's.
I will not reason and compare. My business is to create..."
-William Blake-
The World of William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker.
Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered
a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.
His prophetic poetry has been said to form
"what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".
His visual artistry has led one modern critic to proclaim him
"far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced".
Although he only once journeyed farther than a day's walk
outside London during his lifetime, he produced a
diverse and symbolically rich corpus,
which embraced 'imagination' as "the body of God",
or "Human existence itself".

Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views,
Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity,
and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work.
His paintings and poetry have been characterized as part of
both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic",
for its large appearance in the 18th century.

Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England,
Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the
French and American revolutions,
as well as by such thinkers as Jacob Boehme and Emanuel Swedenborg.

Blake claimed to experience visions throughout his life.
They were often associated with beautiful religious themes and imagery,
and therefore may have inspired him further with spiritual works and pursuits.
Certainly, religious concepts and imagery figure centrally in Blake's works.
God and Christianity constituted the intellectual centre of his writings,
from which he drew inspiration.
In addition, Blake believed that he was personally instructed
and encouraged by Archangels to create his artistic works,
which he claimed were actively read and enjoyed by those same Archangels.

Blake shared Dante's distrust of materialism and the corruptive nature of power,
and clearly relished the opportunity to represent the atmosphere
and imagery of Dante's work pictorially.
Even as he seemed to near death, Blake's central preoccupation
was his feverish work on the illustrations to Dante's Inferno;
he is said to have spent one of the very last shillings he possessed
on a pencil to continue sketching.

Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify.
The 19th century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary,"
and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with
contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors."

The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake
by William Blake, David V. Erdman (Commentary),
Harold Bloom (Editor), William Golding

William Blake:
The Complete Illuminated Books
by David Bindman (Introduction), William Blake

William Blake
by Peter Ackroyd, Robin Hamlyn, Marilyn Butler, Michael Phillips

Blake, Jung, and the Collective Unconscious:
The Conflict Between Reason and Imagination
by June Singer, Esther Harding (Introduction)

Fearful Symmetry
by Northrop Frye

A Blake Dictionary:
The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake
by S. Foster Damon, Morris Eaves

Johfra Bosschart
1919-1998

   Johfra described his works as;
"Surrealism based on studies of psychology, religion, the Bible,
astrology, antiquity, magic, witchcraft, mythology and occultism".

Until now, Johfra has been known primarily as a painter of Esoteric subjects.
His association with the seven Meta-Realist (fantasy realism) painters and
his suite of twelve Zodiac Signs garnered him recognition as a
master Hermetic painter - not only in his native Holland
but also throughout the world. All of that has changed recently.

Since his death in 1998, many of his unknown works and a
fair sample of his writings have been gathered together and made public for the first time.
The first of these, his autobiography Symphonie Fantastique, appeared in 1998.

A museum of fantastic art dedicated to Johfra, is planned to be completed in about 2003.
It will be located in the center of the Netherlands, near Utrecht.
A foundation has been created by friends and collectors,
to help Ellen (his wife) to realize all these projects.

Johfra can be described as a prophet in his own country who wasn’t heard.
Many people and reviewers were negative and against his work.
During his life he was never taken seriously by the official art-institutes and museums.
But his exhibitions showed the opposite: lots of visitors and always sold out.
Many writers were inspired by his paintings and many books
have been written about him.Just before Johfra died,
his own autobiography was published: ‘Symphony Fantastique’
(ISBN: 90 804422016, de Verbeelding/Woerden, 1998).
In this book he explains why he wrote this autobiography:
"So many people tried to label me and tried to place me in a certain corner.
One writer who made an excellent biography about me, wrote in his book that I was a
‘Gnostic teacher who wanted to purchase and convince pupils through my painting!
I just wanted to make some things clear. Who knows more about me than myself?”

Johfra wrote his life in a diary,
which encompasses four thin-books and nineteen books of 350 pages.
The text of the new book consists of fascinating,
sometimes affecting fragments of that immense work-of-life.
In his diary on 25 July 1959:
‘Describing life in a diary can be an important aid to live more intense,
to absorbe completely in the moment and to assimilate it till the end.
Describing our experience, is like reviving it. In this way we can live twice.’

Some hyperlinks:
A webpage as a tribute to Johfra -
His life and work (Visionary Revue)
by Laurence CARUANA

Manifesto

Read the entire Manifesto in
THE VISIONARY REVUE
The On-line Journal of Visionary Art

Sorry no books YET on the art of Johfra--strange-indeed-very strange!

l.caruana

ernst fuchs

Art of theVisionary
" Traditionally, Visionary art tends towards the beautiful, spiritual and sublime in its subject matter.
Perhaps because the artists themselves have practised meditation,
pursued their visions, and created art with the aim in mind of higher spiritual attainment.
     Nevertheless, if Visionary art is concerned with visions
that spontaneously arise in an altered state of consciousness,
then erotic and even pornographic visions must be included in the genre.
Indeed, many artists who have used sacred symbols in their works have also,
at times, found themselves on a track leading to images of the sexual."
-By Laurence Caruana-

Please Visit Laurence Caruana's Guest Art Gallery-HERE!

Fantasy Art Bookstore's
Visionary Art Bookstore 2
Surrealistic Art Bookstore

BREATH
SPIRIT CARD

SpiritCard Center
Free eCards
Visionary Art E-cards

Visionary Artists Gallery
The Master Artists
Listed Alphabetically by first name.
Alex Grey
Andrew Annenberg
Bernard Xolotl
Brian McGovern
Charles Frizzell
Cheryl Yambrach Rose
Don Davis
Erial Ali
Frank Hettick
Garret Moore
Geoffrey Chandler
Gilbert Williams
Jeffrey K. Bedrick
John Lawton Cullison, Jr.
John Mason
Jonathon Earl Bowser
Joseph Parker
Karl Bang
Penny Slinger
Richard Fields
Satoshi Matsuyama
Sylvan Starbough Rife
Walter Bruneel
Wilby
Wizzle (Angela)

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