IMELDA ALMQVIST ART: JOURNEYS TO OTHER WORLDS, INNER WORLDS & AROUND THE WORLD IN PAINTINGS!
Medieval Art, Medieval Manuscripts, Cosmos, 'Chaosmos', The Will of God, Liber Scivias, Hildegard von Bingen, Holy Grail, Mappa Mundis, Divine Plan, Miracles, Pilgrimage as Microcosm of Life, Follow The Light, Splendor Veritas, Light of Truth, Concept Courtly Love, God-Centered Universe, Coherence & Fragmentation, Christian Paintings on Iberian Peninsula Under Islamic Rule, The Three Religions of the Book, Visionary Paintings, Islamic Thinking, Denial of Physical World and Real Time, Plurality of Viewpoint, Promoting Spiritual Contemplation
Medieval Series & Mozarabic Series
MEDIEVAL SERIES
WINGED SOULS (80 x 100 cm) £650
This painting was inspired by a 15th century illustration from Dante, The Divine Comedy, titled 'Souls Transformed Into Birds'.
In the year 2003 I felt myself increasingly drawn to Medieval Art. I decided to read up on the medieval period to find out what it is that appeals so strongly. I came to realise that there is a huge gulf between today's world of the 21st century thought and the world of Western Medieval thinking.
Today there is an assumption that beneath the surface things are fundamentally incoherent (part of a 'chaosmos'). Then the assumption was that deep down things were fundamentally coherent (part of a 'cosmos'). Most importantly everything was thought to be a reflection of the will of God.
LIBER SCIVIAS (80 x 100 cm) £495
Creation Story from the Book of Genesis
(inspired by a drawing by Hildegard von Bingen)
This shows a great divide between Modern Art and Medieval Art. For the medieval thinker art is the human way to reproduce, in artefacts, those universal rules of the cosmic order. In this sense art reflects the artist's impersonality, rather than his personality! The famous legend of the Holy Grail is not about people 'discovering themselves' (a modern preoccupation!) but about discovering their place in the world - a more humble attitude.
MAPPA MUNDIS (Sold)
Mappa Mundi is Latin and literally translates as 'Map of the World', but in reality a Mappa Mundi is a medieval convention that depicts stories from the Bible.
Put in plainer English: in the Medieval world the Invisible World was the key to the Visible World. In the Middle Ages everything stood for something else and that something was God. Understanding a thing meant seeing the divine plan within it. Space, time and distance were thought to be governed by their significance in the Divine Plan. Miracles were part of everyday life. Every pilgrimage was intended to be a microcosm of the journey through life. A penance, an adventure, a party. The Saints were a bit like the Greek Gods on Mount Olympus - except relics such as bones proved that they really lived once upon a time, were still alive in heaven.
THE TREE OF LIFE, THE RIVER OF LIFE (80 x 100 cm) £495
In the Middle Ages the way to make sense of life was to 'follow the light'. Light provided the only means of understanding a world that was God's work of art. Human works of art achieved meaning or significance only insofar they managed to reveal the splendor veritas, or Light of Truth, by becoming shadow-versions of the Creator's work. The great medieval cathedrals of the 12th and 13th centuries reached out towards God. The end of a pilgrimage promised the forgiveness of a pilgrim's sins or the intercession of their favourite saint.
AND THERE WAS LIGHT (Fiat Lux) (80 x 100 cm) £495
Newsflash! The painting FIAT LUX will appear on the cover of Edwin M Good's book, tentatively titled 'Tales of the Earliest World' this autumn. The book will be published by the Stanford University Press. Edwin M Good is a literary scholar of the Hebrew Bible, he translated the first 11 chapters of Genesis. He taught at Stanford for 35 years. The book is a translation of the text from Hebrew and a discussion of the “tales” in terms of how they work as stories. Mr Good is also a musician and historian of the piano. He owns a wonderful copy of a 1722 Cristofori piano. The link for his site is www.arpicimbalo.com.
Religion of whatever denomination was central to the everyday lives of medieval people. The Church also played the leading role in education, helping the needy and tending the sick. Most people believed that a form of penance would wash away sins and save their souls from Hell. Pilgrimage being the most important and far-reaching penance you could make. But even the poor could visit the tombs of local saints.
CELEBRATING COINCIDENCE! (80 x 100 cm) £495
(Painting inspired by an illustration in a medieval manuscript)
Up to the 11th century most art produced had religious subjects. What changed most between the 11th and 15th centuries was the advent of the concept 'Courtly Love'. This brought an emphasis on heroic adventures as well as a new set of romantic ideals. All this had a huge impact on art (book illustrations, wallpainting, tapestries etc.).
FAST AND FURIOUS (SOLD)
Some art theorists argue that the function of art is to 'heal the alienated, vulnerable human consciousness', which has expelled the sacred by losing connection with the wisdom of the body, represented in the archetypal forces of nature and myth. Others have written of tourism as a 'disenchanted version of medieval pilgrimage', of the Middle Ages as a golden age when trees were seen as the thoughts of God.
CLARA LUCES: ASCENSION (80 x 100 cm) £525
This painting was made during the months of November and December 2008 while listening to litte known Christmas Carols of Latin American Baroque origin. The image was inspired by 'The Tree of the Soul', a diagram created by William Law, an 18th century English mystic.
'A beam of light from the world of consciousness pierces the "dark world" of the unconscious in which the tree of man's spiritual and psychological development is rooted. Passing through the firre world of suffering and experience it opens out in the light of greater consciousness towards the light of God'. This is the process Carl Gustav Jung refers to as Individuation.
The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
Oh, I who long to grow// I look outside myself, and the tree//inside me grows
As the Middle Ages wane, a God-centered universe gives way to a human-centered one. Where there was coherence before, there is now fragmentation. In this respect I find myself out of step with the modern world. If asked to describe in one sentence what my paintings are about, I would have to say: 'The Invisible'. They are about painting The Invisible. I find inspiration in a wide range of things, but they all have one thing in common. They point at the Invisible World that lies behind our Everyday World. The world of dreams, myths, visions, archetypes and universal truths.
THE TREE OF LIFE (NOT FOR SALE)
Adam and Eve started off living in paradise: The Garden of Eden. They could eat freely from all trees, except two planted right in the middle of Eden. Those were the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It seems that God wished to test the human race. The Serpent tempted Eve who tempted Adam in turn. They ate of the forbidden fruit and were cast out of paradise. The Tree of life was essentially a sacrament. Eating from that tree would have given Adam and Eve the gift of everlasting life. If they would have managed not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, their reward would have been to eat from the Tree of Life.
MANDRAKE (80 x 100 cm) £495
Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant Mandragora, belonging to the nightshades family. The roots sometimes contain bifurcations (forked bits, in plain English) that make them resemble human beings.
According to the legend, when the root is dug up is screams and kill all who hear this. Ancient literature offers elaborate instructions for pulling it up. This involves tying a dog to the root to pull it up so the dog dies instead of its master...
All parts of the mandragora plant are poisenous.
This painting was inspired by a medieval illustration in a book on the medicinal use of herbs and plants.
MOZARABIC SERIES
THE HEAVENLY ARMIES (Sold)
Reading up the Medieval period I came across Mozarabic Art.
Mozarabic Art can be defined as Christian painting produced around the year 1000 in an Iberian peninsula under Islamic rule. In that period the three great 'Religions of the Book' coexisted in present-day Spain: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The paintings from that period have a visionary quality that made a huge impression on me. I was intrigued too by the context: the cross-fertilisation of Christian/Judist and Islamic thinking. As in today's world, tensions were mounting rapidly and alarmingly between the Western and Islamic worlds. I found myself drawn to art that evolved from this 'hotbed' in Medieval Europe. Even then there were times of tolerance and mutual exchange as well as times of conflict and tension. It was never a 'marriage of like minds'. And yet I found inspiration here. Particularly because in Medieval times, as explained in the section above, art was was never about self-fulfilment and the personal glory of the artist. Ultimately it was about distancing the viewer from the physical everyday world and promoting a process of spiritual contemplation. It began to seem lilke inspiration or guidance might be found here for modern European people finding themselves on the brink of war with the Islamic world.
SURROUNDED BY SERPENTS (80 x 100 cm) £599
These paintings were dismissed and almost forgotten for centuries. They seemed crude and obscure to people from, say, the Renaissance period when the focus was increasingly on photographic realism, perspective, anatomical correctness. It has been claimed that modern art and the break with traditional painting it introduced made way for re-appreciation of these images. There are affinities between these medieval works and the strident colours and wilful distortion of, for instance, German Expressionist painting. I was struck by paintings showing multiple viewpoints (such as a figure with three faces). It is hard not to believe that Picasso must have been exposed to these images (he lived and worked in Spain after all). Mozarabic paintings frequently show combinations of full frontal and profile views, both for animals and humans. I was struck too by complicated abstract line patterns that remind of Celtic art - there seems to be a link there too. We modern people like to think of ourselves as very creative and innovative. The word 'conformist' has become an insult. Personally I rather like the thought of ideas and images 'spiralling through the centuries' disappearing and then reappearing in another era!
MAPPA VITAE (Sold)
This painting started off as an extension of the concept of a Mappa Mundi. Literally the Latin translates as 'Map of the World', but in reality a Mappa Mundi is a medieval convention that depicts stories from the Bible.
'Mappa Vitae' translates as the 'Map of Life'. We usually think of an embryo growing from the love that exists between a couple, the parents. However, those parents started their life as an embryo and every embryo carries the genetic blueprint for its parents. So there is such a thing as 'the parents in the embryo' as well as the 'embryo resulting from two parents'.
Anyway, denial of the physical world and of real time is a very striking feature in Mozarabic Art. All living creatures are frozen into one single moment, sometimes distorted by the resulting tension. There images are 'fragmented' in a sense: there is a plurality of viewpoint. All details have to be studied seperately. There is not 'one window on the whole image' as there is with realist art. All this means that the image invites you to read it on a conceptual level. It is not conceived in terms of a physical reality bound together by the unities of place, time and action. Another striking feature is the simultaneous presentation of interior and exterior. Both 'the container and the contained' are shown at the same time (say a house and the rooms or inhabitants in it). Colour is used to create the effect of both stability and dynamism. Particularly bands of contrasting colour in the same image. Pictorial space is divided into two or three levels that express a fundamental distinction between the celestial and terrestrial worlds and between the physical and spiritual worlds. (For instance, in one painting you find two bands of colour: one shows what is happening on earth, another what is happening in heaven!)
RELUCTANT ANGEL (80 x 100 cm) £475
Pictorial space in these images has two main functions: to aid an understanding of the narrative (often Bible stories) and to promote spiritual contemplation. These images always serve the faith, never the artist's reputation. Indeed, in many cases the artist is not known.
I found all this both refreshing and inspiring. I have tried to open myself to this way of thinking and in so doing I have found comfort in these times of anxiety and worry. I have found myself painting 'an army of angels' coming to our rescue and even scenes from the Bible. In a way I am only at the beginning of a journey, an adventure, waiting to see where the paintings will take me!
Imelda Almqvist 2006
(Last Updated September 2010)
TOWER OF BABEL (Sold)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN Mireille Mentre Thames and Hudson Ltd London 1996 ISBN 0-500-01732-8
STRANGE LANDSCAPE A Journey Through The Middle Ages Christopher Frayling BBC Books 1995 ISBN 0-563-36965-5
HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL LIFE David Nicolle Chancellor Press 1997 ISBN 0-7537-288-6
THE WISDOM OF NATURE, The Healing Powers and Symbolism of Plants and Animals in the Middle Ages Werner Telesko Prestel Verlag 2001 ISBN 3-7913-2585-X
SIGNS, SYMBOLS and CIPHERS, Decoding the Message Georges Jean Thames and Hudson 1989 New Horizons ISBN 0-500-30087-9
ABUNDANCE (80x 100 cm) £599
This painting, inspired by an illustration in a Medieval Manuscript, is about Abundance, about daring to believe in abundance. Quite a feat in these days of the Credit Crunch and tightening our belts! Yet nature abhors a vacuum and when a space opens in our lives, something will move in to fill that space. It is up to us to decide what form this will take. I am realising more that we are the creators of our own reality. The limits of our own thinking and believes limit what is possibly in our lives. So.. defeat the credit crunch and dare to believe in abundance, dare to open your eyes to the abundance that can enter our lives even when things are tight financially. Sometimes being poor in terms of money can mean being more time-rich. Time can be the greatest gift of all, something we have lost track of in our busy city lives.
Medieval Art, Medieval Manuscripts, Cosmos, 'Chaosmos', The Will of God, Liber Scivias, Hildegard von Bingen, Holy Grail, Mappa Mundis, Divine Plan, Miracles, Pilgrimage as Microcosm of Life, Follow The Light, Splendor Veritas, Light of Truth, Concept Courtly Love, God-Centered Universe, Coherence & Fragmentation, Christian Paintings on Iberian Peninsula Under Islamic Rule, The Three Religions of the Book, Visionary Paintings, Islamic Thinking, Denial of Physical World and Real Time, Plurality of Viewpoint, Promoting Spiritual Contemplation
IMELDA ALMQVIST ART: JOURNEYS TO OTHER WORLDS, INNER WORLDS & AROUND THE WORLD IN PAINTINGS!
