Throughout history, artists have explored altered states of consciousness and used those experiences to create their work. Since the paleolithic wall paintings in the caves of Lascaux, when shamans captured the images of sacred animals, art has been the product of visionary states. But in recent years, a new visual arts movement has come of age, “Visionary Art,” which puts the visionary state at the center of the experience.
Pioneered by painters like Alex and Allyson Grey, Robert Venosa, Martina Hoffman, Pablo Amaringo, and H.R. Giger, among many others, Visionary Art has become one of today’s most popular expressions of spiritual and psychedelic consciousness. For many people, Visionary Art acts as a guide for understanding and integrating experiences of expanded awareness. The paintings become maps of the realms we touch through mystical union.
But what distinguishes this kind of artwork and makes it special? Is it the artist’s intention? Does Visionary have to represent a mystical vision? Can an abstract painting be Visionary Art? What makes for a great Visionary Artwork? A new generation of Visionary Artists is now maturing and reaching a wide audience — through comics and sculptures and installations. Where is the Visionary Art movement heading?
To explore these questions we’ve gathered some of Reality Sandwich’s most knowledgeable experts in the field of Visionary Art. Our discussants will be:
Nese Devenot — Founder of Psychedemia Conference. Doctoral candidate studying psychedelic philosophy in the Comparative Literature and Literary Theory program at U. Penn.
Robert Tindall — Author of The Shamanic Odyssey: Homer, Tolkien and the Visionary Experience. Writer, classical guitarist, and long-time Zen practitioner and inveterate traveler.
Benton Rooks — Author of the graphic novel KALI YUGA and IMMOLATION, a futuristic fantasy novel that explores dark themes and forbidden occulture. Co-coined the term “entheodelic storytelling” in 2014 with Graham Hancock, Rak Razam and Jeremy D. Johnson.
Jonathan Zap — Author of “Crossing the Event Horizon.” Writer, photographer, author, teacher and philosopher who has written extensively on psychology and contemporary mythology.
James Oroc — Entheogenic author, philosopher and speaker. Author of “Tryptamine Palace: 5 me0-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad” and “A Journey From Burning Man to the Akashic Field.”
It all starts in early December with a live, interactive video discussion led by our featured authors. You can take part in the conversation, just like a Skype call, able to ask questions and offer observations on camera. Then the discussion moves to a text forum for 4 weeks of dialog and debate by the RS community, led by the featured authors and moderated by the RS team.
Visionary Dialogs
Reality Sandwich’s Visionary Dialogs bring the RS community together to explore the transformational topics that are shaping the next wave of consciousness culture. Led by popular Reality Sandwich authors, each month sees the launch of a new Visionary Dialog with a live, online event, followed by 4 weeks of in-depth discussion in a text forum.
Visionary Dialogs are a benefit offered to Conscious Agents, the dedicated Reality Sandwich readers who support RS through a paid subscription. Subscriptions are sliding scale and priced so that everyone in the RS community can participate. When you become a Conscious Agent, you not only get access to Visionary Dialogs. You also make everything we do at Reality Sandwich possible. In addition, you receive MP3 recordings of new RS articles each week, get discounts to Evolver Learning Lab courses and Evolver.net products, and experience RS without the ad banners.
