Expressing Spirituality in Art

Expressing spirituality in art can mean different things to different people. For me, my spiritual beliefs, if you like, are one of the big ingredients in my art, particularly my healing art and colour harmony work.

Expressing Spirituality In Art

The other ingredients, by the way, are a love of putting paint to canvas, photo painting and the use of color (particularly all shades of purple as you might have noticed). As well as a desire to produce something that people will enjoy having in their home and/or office and never get tired of looking at.

It Starts With A Feeling

Sometimes, when I am working on something I have in my mind the image of someone, or type of person, that I am creating the piece for. I think that creates an energy that goes with it, whether it is in print or on screen. For example, I might design a piece specifically thinking of people sitting in a healthcare setting waiting room. As I did with this image ‘English Cottage Garden Flowers’. A piece that will hopefully distract and uplift people who are sitting either bored with waiting or worried about their appointment.

Examples

These are three pieces which are examples of my expressing spirituality in art.

Lucid Dreaming

The first piece is called ‘Lucid Dreaming’.  Have you ever had a dream where you know you are dreaming? It seems so real and you feel like you are really participating in it? Well that is known as lucid dreaming.

This can be faint recognition through to a full blown awareness experience. Dreamers can report having being fully conscious in their dreams and experiencing the dream with total clarity. It can be a real opportunity to connect with your inner self and your creativity.

My piece ‘Lucid Dreaming’ depicts emerging from the deeper dream state into the lucid period (where everything is much sharper). It heads towards the void at the right of the picture where the new reality will be created.  The colors I have used are significant in this piece; green symbolizes growth, positive change and healing. Purple suggests power and inspiration.

Cloud Yoga

In yoga there is a pose called ‘Cloud Salutation’ and that was the subject I chose for my second piece. The idea is that you imagine moving like a cloud whilst floating on the wind of your breath. I like the idea of going with the flow and floating with the clouds. This piece is based on a photograph of a cloudy sky. I have added textures and higher chakra colors (green, turquoise, indigo and purple) to enhance the feeling of rising above the earthly plane.

Auric Synapse

The third piece is called ‘Auric Synapse’ and is a digital painting that uses all of the colors of the rainbow, representing all of the seven major chakras.  The piece represents the holographic nature of the brain. It suggests little flares of activity indicated in the different colors of the aura as the energy connections are made between the synapses. Senses and thoughts trigger electrical impulses that travel around the neural network. Which I have suggested with the sense of movement in the design. In the same way that music stimulates the synapse so do our thoughts. And this is where our positive thoughts can create good and rebuild broken pathways whereas negative thoughts can break them down.

Of course there are many other ways of expressing spirituality in art. In my art collections you will find images of Buddha, Ganesh, Archangels and more. You can see them in my spiritual art collections on Pictorem and RedBubble.

This article was originally published in 2016 and reworked and republished on 25 March 2022.

Before you go

My name is Dorothy Berry-Lound an artist and writer. You can find out more about my art and writing at https://dorothyberryloundart.com.

You can follow me on Facebook.

Thank you for reading!