Goddess Country Visions

I can't believe all the years I spent as an art appreciator without discovering `fantasy' art. As an avid fan of fantasy literature and films, I was thrilled to be introduced to the works of Richard Ward and Brian McGovern.

They and sculptor Welton Rotz were the first visionaries whose work I saw, in the Vision and Magick gallery in Petaluma, California. They were the first Sandra and I interviewed, one afternoon in August of 1992, at Richard and Deborah Ward's house in Bloomfield.

Bloomfield is the proper setting for Ward, as eclectic a person as he is a talented painter. The town itself is somewhat nonexistent now, save for one tavern and a lot of houses that lie in a limbo zone between Petaluma, Marshall and Two Rock. But at one time Bloomfield was a thriving town, back in the early days of Northern California. It existed before Petaluma; indeed before most of the other towns that survive in this area. It contained a luxury hotel and was home to a number of people who came west with their families and built a sort of resort out there where now there isn't much except a road to the sea. Only the Bloomfield tavern remains.

On the way out to Ward's house we stopped to pick up Brian McGovern. At that time he lived on the outskirts of Petaluma, in a small, incredibly tidy apartment. His office was the miniscule second bedroom, and there was no evidence of a large studio, which he clearly needed judging from the size of some of his paintings. That day, the living room wall was dominated by an enormous round painting, titled "All Saints Day", that would become part of the Illuminist exhibit.

Ward's house was as different from McGovern's as could possibly be imagined. A converted stagecoach station, abandoned when the stages stopped running through Bloomfield, it is filled with eclectic objects and antique toys. We were joined there by the sculptor, Welton Rotz, who rounded out this committee of three Illuminists nicely.

Since that first day in Bloomfield, Sandra and I have discovered with growing delight a whole new artistic world in `fantasy' or `illuminist' art. My younger years were occupied with the study of classical and impressionist art, which are still favorites but now joined by this new love. The years I spent in England I also viewed a lot of modern and abstract art, which will never be a favorite of mine though I do appreciate some of the forms (particularly modern sculpture). But Illuminist art is a continuing delight, with its' myriad forms and colors, textures and ideas that run riot over the canvas and lead the viewer into unknown realms, be they dream or nightmare ...

They call themselves The Illuminists, a term favored by gallery-owner Barbara Rogers for the first show at her Northern California gallery, Vision and Magick (August, 1992). They have also been called Visionary, fantasy artists and Cosmic Romantics. Their work is based on pagan and religious myth and the traditions of nature, and these artists are far from the ordinary. In a time when men are castigated as being insensitive and out of touch with their feelings, Richard Ward, Welton Rotz and Brian McGovern have managed to create a world of magic and light far removed from the mundane. Barbara Kahn and Josie Grant use the traditions of their Jewish heritage and their new beliefs in Buddhism and the Mother Goddess to create wondrous worlds of illusion and myth. Mark Henson uses nature and the ways in which man is misusing his world in order to create some strange and wonderful (sometimes horrifying) paintings of great magnitude. So much of art has become commercial and unreal, it seems almost otherworldly to see painting and sculpture that can capture the emotion and feeling of the world beyond the every day. Warren Percell is a `shamanistic' visionary, painting and recording the myths and legends of the American Indian peoples. Jeffrey Bedrick and Kevin Kihn represent the newest generation of the Illuminists, who combine traditional myths with the technology and fantasy of the modern world, venturing into the realm of SuperHeroes and Heroines, and Science Fiction.

San Francisco native Ward studied at the California School of Art, the Jean Turner School of Commercial Art, and at The Chicago Institute. In addition to Fantasy art, Ward is a renowned Plein-air painter, and attributes his amazing ability in portraying the `other world' to having viewed its' inhabitants for so many years.

Sculptor Welton Rotz came to the bay area in 1963 to attend San Francisco Theological Seminary, where he soon abandoned his graduate work in favor of sculpting. Now a professed lover of the `Great Earth Mother', Rotz uses mythological subjects for many of his marble sculptures. He studied Celtic mythology in Ireland and the working of marble in Italy.

Brian McGovern began his professional career at the age of twelve, when one of his paintings won a competition in a local mall and sold the same day. McGovern , who died in 1994 before he reached his fortieth birthday, considered his style of painting Cosmic Romanticism, and Sandra commented that The Illuminists `have a love affair with the universe'. McGovern's murals can be seen in the AT&T building in San Francisco; Harvey's Lake Tahoe; and in the Old Main Street Saloon in Sebastopol, California.

One of California's first visionary painters, Barbara Kahn has been a professional artist for thirty years, since her graduation from The Rhode Island School of Design at the age of 21. Her fantasy paintings are drawn from visions and dreams, executed in watercolor and acrylic on canvas. Her subjects are strongly metaphysical and oriented towards the female principle in all of us.

Barbara Kahn is too easy to like. That, combined with the fact that Sandra and I adored her work the first time we went to her house in Inverness made up for the fact that no one in their right mind would try to find a house using the circuitous routes on those hills by the ocean -- it was actually worth it. She uses these fabulous images, where animals and flowers interweave and create the illusion of being something entirely new. From observing Pat, one of the next generation of art appreciators at Vision and Magick, Kahn's vision speaks to men as well as women; is, in fact, universal.

Marin County artist Josie Grant is a well-known muralist, part of the Street Artist Advisory Board in San Francisco. Before she was thirteen, Grant had already won international poster awards from the Lathem Foundation, and at fifteen she began college-level courses at The San Francisco Art Institute. Grant lives in Fairfax, in a tiny house dominated by enormous paintings. There's an old carriage house out in back, which has been converted into a studio. It all had vines crawling over it, and a large dog that wanted to sit in my lap. I had no objection except that the kitchen chair I was sitting in only has room for one. It would be difficult not to admire Grant, who came from a life of privilege and intellectual superiority but chose to raise her daughter herself, with no assistance, and pursue a career in art as well. She succeeded so well at both that in addition to being a renowned visionary, she is now the mother of a university student with grants to study printmaking in Florence.

Warren Percell started out as a commercial artist, but his scope in the realm of fine arts, in which he has concentrated for the past ten years, is remarkable. It is his marine paintings and `Shaman Women' that place him in the realm of the Illuminists, the latter in particular showing another view of the wild beauty of the Southwest. Warren Percell is a friend of Richard Ward's, and his studio is located in an old service station in Petaluma. A perfect location, he catches everyone going to or from the beach. No one can miss the giant blue whale's tail on the roof of the studio. As friendly and genial as Ward, and of the same generation of all-round artists who do many different styles, it was Warren who first told us about Ailene Sheridan, second wife of visionary catalyst Norman Stiegelmeyer.

Warren was the only visionary we met who didn't really care for him. Norman Stiegelmeyer was an instructor at the San Francisco Art Institute during the seventies, and he had a strong influence on the generation of artists that passed under his tutelage. He never imposed style, his or anybody elses, on his students and that freedom may have been part of what encouraged the up and coming visionaries of the seventies. His own work was of mixed media. Paintings, three dimensional pieces are perhaps best described as landscapes and were encased in plexiglass. His work stands on its' own as an excellent example of what true visionaries can create.

Mark Henson paints beautiful, erotic scenes of people who are frequently part of the landscape around them. He also paints beautiful, frightening pictures of technology and ecology run amok, set askew by man and rampaging over Mother Earth until she looks like a holocaust scenario. Henson lives and works in Santa Cruz, what should be an ideal location for an artist. Except that his paintings are considered too erotic for that up-tight little town, and despite his obvious talent and vision, he's had some problems getting galleries interested in his work. We hope he isn't one of those artists who only become famous and successful after they're dead. His politically-oriented paintings are fascinating in their sheer array and technicality, whether or not you agree with his views (lucky us; we do!).

Jeffrey K. Bedrick is the youngest of the Illuminists, younger than Brian McGovern by five years. His background is an extraordinary one, studying with the visionary masters from the time he was a boy and beginning his career while still in his teens. He has something to say about visionary art and some artists who categorize themselves as visionaries:

"Gustave Klimt and some artists like him were called visionaries during the 1920's, but the true meaning of the word has to do with art that's inspired by a vision. Almost a religious vision, a revelation. A lot of the artists who claim to be visionary can be very pretentious. They claim to have had some kind of a revelation, when all it really is a unicorn in a poppy field."

Bedrick has an amazing talent, but in his early thirties he has stalled in a commercial art miasma, producing too many paintings that look alike because that's what his agent wants from him. Since he is now selling a lot of art in Japan, those paintings all contain the same vapid-looking, tall, thin blond woman. He explains that he is waiting for a new level, a new revelation, to come upon him ... we hope it's soon.

Kevin Kihn is the gentlest of the Illuminists, in that Brian McGovern and Mark Henson ventured over into the realm of horror with some of their work, mostly meant as a commentary on our world. Kihn draws his alien landscapes as escapes from that world, and they are ultimately peaceful and soothing, while bizarre and other-worldly. His `globe' process draws the viewer into the work and makes him/her a part of the whole. Kihn lives in a sprawling railroad flat above Market Street, not what many would consider an ideal location for a visionary. As a gay activist he spends many hours immersed in the very real and sometimes heartbreaking world, and his art is gorgeously escapist -- to a time and place of childhood dreams and peaceful visions. As the last artist interviewed for the book, Kihn had to be supremely unique to fit the qualifications left. His three-dimensional, spherical paintings fit our bill, and we can see he has a place coming up in the artistic hall of innovative design.

The tradition of `Goddess Art' is older than written history, and though suppressed for many years by patriarchal societies and religions, art inspired by goddess-traditions is enjoying a resurgence in the Western world. Revived by men and women tired of the rape of the planet, overpopulation and the repressive nature of traditional religions, goddess-inspired art exists in many forms. The second show at the Vision and Magick gallery (November, 1993) was a menage of multi-cultural art, inspired by and based on goddess traditions the world over. `Adorning the Goddess' continued Barbara Rogers' work, begun with `The Illuminists', in presenting the unusual, beautiful, and magical in art. Multi-media artists Motik, Katya, Joslin and Pamella Nesbit (along with Illuminist painters Barbara Kahn and Josie Grant) put together a fabulous presentation of clothing, jewelry, paintings and sculptures incorporating their favorite theme.

The worship of the Goddess has been a long time returning, but that time has begun. For Debora and me it began with the interview of an author, more than a year before this art project was born. She was a priestess in a fast-growing group of goddess-worshippers. And we found ourselves drawn to this school of thought. There were, however, very few images to back it up. It is only natural that a new school of artists should have sprung up to impress their vision upon the event. Religion, or belief systems, have long been a favorite artistic subject. It is this fact which has given us evidence of goddess worship in times before written history came upon the scene.

The time was ripe for us to find artists who presented the image of the goddess. There had been more than a hint of that image in the work of The Illuminists, but it wasn't quite enough. Then, one day, on a twisting road to the sea in Marin County, we saw it. Not just the vision people see as the goddess, but women out there painting their (her) power, showing it in artifacts such as jewelry and standing wooden figures. Some of these women are as much craftswomen as artists, handcrafting images for the public. It fills a desperate need. For with images like these we cannot ignore the essential creativity of womankind.

The women we discovered that afternoon and in the intervening months were all quite different from one another. Motik was a wild forest creature, who sat on the floor and kept her hands and mouth moving the entire time we were with her. The energy bounced off the walls of the small apartment she shared with her musician/photographer husband, Rover. No lurking behind trees for this woman of the woods. Instead, she reminded me of a skinny, chattering monkey, a being of plenty and cheerful noisiness.

Motik's name is Hebrew, but her ancestry combines Christian, Hebrew and Arab roots. Among her ancestors were many who strayed from the accepted path to follow that of Wicca, the Old Religion. each of her paintings is of a different goddess archetype, and also included in the show were her exclusive `goddess silhouettes' painted on wood.

Jewelry designer Katya works in sterling silver and gemstones, and also comes from a Hebrew tradition. Katya was trained as a Metalsmith at the University of California, Berkeley (something students can no longer do, she points out, since the Reagan budget cuts), and has been a professional artist for twenty years.

Marin artist Joslin designs kimonos to `make a woman feel like a goddess' and woven necklaces to compliment her creations. Her paintings are water-color flowers in vibrant colors. Joslin was something else again. Large and boisterous and just a little bit shy, in an odd sort of way. Her home is elegant and serene and she admits visitors with some reluctance. You are in her haven and she's willing to be friendly, but wants to get to know you before she lets you all the way in. Once admitted you are overwhelmed by the breadth of her vision and creativity. She stamps her personality on everything from clothing to paintings. Sad and withdrawn or large and strong, the images speak womanhood.

We didn't meet all the women presented here on that day, but that was the beginning. We found more at Vision and Magick later on. Katya and her jewelry. During the two years we have known her, Katya's star has risen to prominence, and her `goddess' pendants are sweeping the country and hopefully soon the planet. Pamella Nesbit and her weavings and shields. Pamella has also expanded her horizons since we first met, and is working with Judy Chicago on her new multi-media project, `Resolutions for the Millennium'. Nesbit has been doing fabric art for twenty years. It was while traveling around the world with her husband, during the early 1970's, that she began her fabric art. She designs tapestries and `shields'.

Ailene Sheridan has been doing visionary work since the seventies. She has this idea that, for a very long time indeed, women have been carrying the ball. One can hardly fail to agree; women carry the ball in relationships, in keeping the planet running smoothly, at least as much as men, and her Ball Carrier series is worth seeing.

Sheridan works in a variety of mediums - oils, pastels, pen and ink and much more. Her series `Ballcarrier and Beast' is a monotype pastel - an intriguing type of print. When we talk of a mixed-media artist, Ailene is what we mean. She's even managed to find a use for dryer dust ...

Beth Ann Watt lives and works in the little town of Sonoma. She works in oil paint and achieves great fluidity in a style that she describes as `organic'. By this she means that many of the shapes in her paintings are reminiscent of the inner organs of the physical body. She celebrates the goddess in all of us.

Jane Sipe and her now-renowned Jane Iris Designs take the jewelry of the Goddess (many aspects of her, actually) all over the world, where they are well-received. The designs are simple, sleek, and pleasing to the eye. Jane employs ten women at her Sebastopol studio, making her one of the most successful of the visionary designers.

Christine DeCamp is a painter and sculptor who captures the whimsical and magical in her work, through the use of bright colors, primitive images and more than a little tongue-in-cheek humor. From her life-sized mermaid sculpture complete with a necklace of beads to her `under the ocean chair', it's certain that a piece of Christine's art in your house will become a starter of stimulating conversations. DeCamp is the most `pop' art of the goddess artists, and her designs are whimsical and absolutely delightful. When we went to her little house in Mill Valley, it was one of those cheerful little California rainstorms that threaten to blow you right off the road, and it was wonderful to take haven in her art-filled living room and drink tea.

Lois Anderson makes art out of what many people would consider junk, though she is by no means a `junk' artist. She is rather an embellishment artist, who celebrates the goddess and all religions with her works and icons. She received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1978 for her largest and most famous work, `Altar'. Anderson, the last of the goddess artists used in Goddess Country Visions, is also the one who has been around the longest. She hung out with beat poets on the streets of North Beach, and one of her ornamented chests is part of a permanent collection on 1960's art at The Oakland Museum. Now retired from her job as a librarian, Lois concentrates on her art and her enormous collection of flea market memorabilia, which has converted her Mill Valley house into a kind of museum. She has one entire bedroom devoted to hats, handbags and shoes!

These are some of the women who will be helping to build the picture of a nurturing goddess. Of the loving earth that has given us what she had. The female image is out there, and represented more often than we thought. Now that our eyes are open, we see it everywhere. War-torn and ragged or strong and beautiful, woman, goddess-like, is struggling to regain her place.

There's no need to toss out the gorgeous and powerful male images that preside over our written history. Michelangelo and his host of artisans will always be creators of great visions. Who can forget the heavily muscled images of man and his strength? He's there in the Sistine chapel in all his glory; he and his friends will always be around. Just slide over a bit, my boys, and give the old gal some hip room. She gave birth to you, after all, and she'd like to have her picture taken.

As their name implies, `Transformative Visionaries' transform the world from the mundane to the delightful, the bizarre and unusual. The Transformatives see reality differently, as if they were peering through a transparent Kaleidoscope or into another dimension. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, to `transform' implies a change either in external form or in inner nature, in function. Transformative artists do both these things. They transform the world around through their art, and they transform the very meanings of the objects they paint through their rendering.

Bonnie Bisbee and Cynthia Grace work on a grand scale, in bright, primitive colors. Their people may be riding unicorns or sitting by purple waterfalls -- they evoke the child in all of us, longing for a gayer, brighter world. They are similar in their style and theme (though no viewer could ever mistake one for the other), and were both part of the original group of visionaries at The San Francisco Art Institute during the 1960's. They use bright colors and intense images. Bisbee adorns her work with gilding and jewels, and uses many children and animals, real and mythical. They both favor Eastern religious symbols and myths, particularly Grace, who is a student of both Buddhism and Hinduism. They are the most likely of the visionaries to lift the spirits of a depressed viewer, simply through a glimpse into their multi-hued world.

Marilyn Watkins has a heavier, darker hand and corresponding imagery. It is telling that she uses the black angel symbol frequently; she sees black angels as the bearers of great power, where some viewers might see them as evil. To visionaries, there is little that actually represents evil apart from man himself; it is more likely that every image has its' own meaning unique to the artist. Watkins paints `healing' images of nature, animals and angels -- she particularly favors black angels, which she feels are symbols of great healing power. She began her career in the area of art therapy, but was drawn to create, taken over by the art until she finally devoted herself to it.

Sculptor Victoria Whitehand is also a devotee of Eastern mythology, and the lighter tough of whimsy. Her figures dance and cavort, living lives filled with a vision of beauty and spiritual contentment. Whether they exist in the dimension of Whitehand's imagination or a better world just beyond the range of the mundane is for the viewer to determine.

Ron Rodgers is a sculptor, too, and we had a difficult time deciding which chapter he belongs in. His bronze work covers such a range, all within the visionary category, he jumps from the transformative into the surrealist. Is his Daphne and Apollo lifesize sculpture transformative? Are his little men with the geometric shapes for heads or the twigs for limbs surrealist? Good question, and we're still not sure. One thing we know for certain -- Rodgers is a terrific artist, one who deserves much more recognition and fame, no matter what you call his work (we call it fabulous). Rodgers is unusual in that he creates works of astonishing beauty and also ones of amazing eclecticism. His life-sized bronzes grace shopping centers, hotels and corporate buildings all over the world. His smaller `fractured' bronzes show his own vision of transforming reality into a series of fragmented and twisted images which are still somehow empathetic.

Linda Ross Larson is part of the new generation of California visionaries, working in different mediums and attempting to give their paintings and creations a strange, otherworldly appeal. Larson lives in a little house in San Francisco with a terrific view. From the outside, it's easy to see which house belongs to her and her computer-software designer husband, because it's the only one on the street painted in a rainbow of colors. Inside, there are lots of colors everywhere, too, and a sun porch filled with computer equipment. Larson has an unusual style and execution in her paintings, one that has earned her an early following and promises to garner her a large and appreciative audience in the years to come.

`To boldly go, where no one has gone before' ... sound familiar, Trekkers? What Star Trek and it's offshoots have done for Science Fiction, Geoffrey Chandler would like to do for visionary art -- take the viewer into space and suspend him there, in another world. Not quite real, not quite fantasy...Chandler has developed a deserved reputation as one of the foremost of the California visionaries, and his vision is different from any of the other artists in our book.

Chandler is well-known, specializing in paintings of space and everything to do with it, adding a slightly skewed perspective to what can and cannot be seen in the night sky. His work is on permanent exhibit in many universities and observatories, as well as The Smithsonian Institute.

Bill Martin is the most commercially successful of the early visionaries, and it is easy to see why. His paintings are calm, and soothing, but at the same time they are miracles of adaption...using nature as we see it all around us, he adds another ingredient so it is like through a gateway into another dimension, one a few degrees off from ours. Martin, another member of the Art Institute club, has gained a considerable reputation for his landscapes. The world he creates is sometimes stark, but with a detail and delicacy of execution that reaches the viewer and draws them in. Stark or clean and serene? It's up to you to judge. Now step into their world, and view your own through a slightly different lens ...

What would Rod Serling have been, if he was an artist instead of a writer? A Surrealist, of course. Most likely a visionary surrealist, because abstract surrealism wouldn't offer the twisted, slightly askew vision of the world that Serling embraced. Visionary surrealists see into another dimension, without the assistance of films or books, but sometimes using hallucinatory drugs. The use of those drugs was more popular during the years of the early visionaries and their time at The San Francisco Art Institute -- many of the new generation of visionary surrealists need no more stimulation than the insanity of the world in which we live.

The original Surrealists believed that art, like life, should reflect ugliness and chaos. Visionary Surrealists certainly believe in the last part of that dictum, though nobody could say they create anything ugly. Unusual, certainly -- bizarre, probably. But beautiful? Definitely.

Nick Hyde is one of the original California visionaries, certainly among the foremost of this group, if not the most commercially successful. That latter is probably due more to his difficult attitude and personality than his talent, which is phenomenal. Psychedelic painter Hyde was one of the first California `visionaries'. A reclusive and enigmatic figure, Hyde paints complex paintings that resemble drug dreams and fantasies, and dreamy landscapes that could also come out of a dream ... perhaps a daydream. A leading light of the movement during the 1960's and 1970's, Hyde has once again emerged into the art scene after spending the 1980's in seclusion at his Clear Lake cabin.

Sharyn Desideri is a surrealist by virtue of background; she majored in Psychology in college and brings her extensive knowledge of human foibles and fantasies to canvas and sculpture. Since she sometimes sees into other dimensions after a particularly good painting session, perhaps one day she will disappear into one of them for good, and we'll lose a very talented and bizarre visionary. Desideri does strange art. A woman who wishes she had been born a dragon (or perhaps remembers that she was one, in another life), she brings a sense of the `other' to everything she creates. These include paintings and sculptures, and some other pieces that are difficult to define. Mostly self-taught, she inhabits her own private Twilight Zone that produces some strange and wonderful art.

Carolyn Ferris lives in Marin, and looks the part. Long, straight hair, pretty face, upscale, designer-hippy clothes. But her art is a whole different subject -- she's a surrealist who veers from the nearly abstract to the erotic, and it is in the latter area she is planning to work for now, since she feels there is far too much of the `sexploitation' type of art in America, and too little that is genuinely sensual. Ferris is one of the artists who illustrated Timothy Leary's 1994 book, Cyberpleasures and Politics. Her early work comprised what she terms her `mosaics', paintings consisting of people, animals, even landscapes done in a mosaic of colors that boggled the mind and the imagination. Ferris turned in a slightly different direction in 1994, beginning a series of surrealistic erotic paintings.

Collage is vic keller's form, and her work brings new depth to the art form. The images have more to say and the viewer has more pleasure than is usual within the form. It's hard to say how she does it, but somehow the viewer can get lost in her collages. Oh, by the way, her name isn't spelt with capital letters ... vic adds her own touch to everything. vic keller is a follower of Jess, who was her mentor and directly influenced her work. Her collage art is a true example of `more than the sum of its' parts', and while most collage art wouldn't be considered visionary, vic's couldn't be classified as anything else. She now lives in a tiny town in Anderson Valley, a strange and secluded part of California that also houses the legendary town of Boonville. Her husband is a publisher and editor of poetry books.

Gage Taylor is one of the most successful and best-known of the early California visionaries. His early work could best be classified as `transformative', but his style has changed radically in the past ten years. He now paints in collaboration with his wife, Uriel Dana, and they are certainly foremost amongst the New Surrealists. Of the New Surrealism, Dana says, "The Neo-Surrealist takes two realities that are not associated with one another and mixes those two." Their work in oil is rich and evocative of a world between, something not quite right, but certainly not wrong -- something that might be seen out of the edge of sight, before the mind corrected the illusion.

Taylor was one of the same group as Chandler, Martin, Hyde, Grant ... you get the idea. Known for his surrealistic landscapes during the 1970's, when he met wife Uriel Dana his whole perspective changed, and Taylor/Dana art, while still in the school of Visionary Surrealism, is something rich and rare, and changing slightly with each new series.

Paul Nicholson is of the same generation as the first California visionaries, but he got a late start in the field and is really part of the second generation, both in style and in the fact that he considers people like Gage Taylor, Bill Martin and Nick Hyde his inspiration. He, too, has changed his style over the past ten years -- during the 1980's he would have been considered a Goddess artist. Now he has ventured far into the territory of Surrealism, and his results are sometimes remarkable, and always pleasing.

Dario Campinile is an Italian transplant to Northern California, but his work fits right in with the other Neo-Surrealists in this book. Most of it is beautiful, and soothing; the sight of a gorgeous woman (often his wife, who would appear to have great strength of character in her face, unless he sees through the rose-tinted eyes of love) lying with a tiger...and some is more disturbing. But all is evocative of a slightly different, more romantic vision ... the vision of a man who embraces both Italy and California as his inspiration. Campinile painted the incredible new logo for Paramount Pictures -- check it out next time you see one of their movies. The surrealistic element is evident, but perhaps more subtle than some of his other, less commercial work.

Clayton Anderson is a different kind of Surrealist; his work verges far more toward the abstract than any other artist in this book. But he is most definitely a visionary, in a complicated, most surreal way -- his paintings are crowded with imagery, some seemingly incongruous. Like the best abstract art, Anderson's work evokes a different response in every viewer. But as visionary art should do, it also transports the viewer to another place and possibly another time -- Anderson's world is just a little further over on the parallel continuum. Anderson is also a transplant to California, first from Louisville, Kentucky and then from Philadelphia, where he first made his name. Much of his work is more in the line of Abstract Surrealism than any of our other artists, but it still has the rich, evocative content and texture needed for a true visionary.

A discussion of psychedelic and surrealist visionary art (and, some would argue, all visionary art) wouldn't be complete without the mention of drugs and the role they played in the process of the early visionaries. Josie Grant discusses this ...

"I think it's important to mention the use of psychedelics in the visionary process. Although I myself limited its' use to say once a year or so, I would use something to look at my paintings and to become closer to the spirit and the god/goddess source. I had very gracious connections, so I never had a `bad' trip, as it were ... but I must emphasize that I believe my paintings as well as those of my contemporaries, if not all art are really in a state of frozen animation, and truly take on a life of their own when the doors of perception are opened with the use of psychedelics."

"I believe that these tools, when used by people of conscience, opened up a beautiful and spiritual reality, and that we as painters are putting these feelings of vision through the palette into a material realm.

"This is important to explore and document in terms of `visionary' art, and here is where the argument between `drug' induced or `alcohol' induced art (as in the abstractionists) came into play in the graduate seminars (at The Art Institute during the 1960's).