Visionary

Visionary denotes artists expressing themes of transcendence, mysticism, alchemy, and the sacred. Much of their imagery can be seen as Surrealism owing to its dreamlike and unearthly qualities. However, visionaries also produce non-objective abstraction. Some may be Outsiders while many have been academically trained.

Tom Blodgett

Tom Blodgett

1940 - 2012
American
Rare is the artist who could claim to have dived as deep into the unconscious and survived the journey — bringing back images of intense imagination and technical brilliance. As proof, this recluse kept his life’s works buried in a dilapidated shack in the hills of Eugene, Oregon. The...
  • Early surrealism series: Salmon
  • Early surrealism series: “Gifts”
  • Early surrealism series: “Hi Tom!”
Joseph Bartnikowski

Joseph Bartnikowski

1926 - 2005
American
Yes, a street artist can become a master. “The Wizard of Brooklyn” was a completely self-taught artist who was also a holistic healer at one of the world’s largest mental hospitals. Psychoanalysts said he fit the profile of a classic reclusive hoarder. Bartnikowski found it...
  • Phonebook Page 1294
Yisrael K. Feldsott

Yisrael K. Feldsott

1954
American
That Feldsott's supercharged paintings bring something new, brash, vital and exciting into the generally self-conscious, sometimes even precious realm of contemporary American art should not surprise us. They ask us, urgently, to reconsider the role of the metaphysical in our lives and art in...
  • Songs of War
  • Arrivals in the Time Before Time
  • Master of Game, the Law and the Hunted
Joan Thorne

Joan Thorne

1943
A New Image painter whose exuberance of color and brushwork weaves spatial depths, creating an optical energy.
  • Jarabaco
Ed Nelson

Ed Nelson

1907 - 1992
American
This visionary outsider created pictures depicting the “spiritual atoms world controlled by magnetic light.” The planetary worlds he painted were “controlled by the differential movement of magnetic light” or the “proto-plasma” of light.
  • Photo-Genetic No.5
  • Photo-Genetic No.6
  • Photo-Genetic No.4
Alfred Nicholson

Alfred Nicholson

1929 - 2009
American
In the history of American landscape painting, the visionary artists who pursued the paths of fantasy and mysticism are few. Here are poetic landscapes, part real, part fantasy — and always mystical.
  • Untitled Landscape No.53
  • Untitled Landscape No.54
  • Untitled Landscape No.49