Transcendent Visions
Exploring the Metaphysical Through Abstract Art
Untitled (Triple Consciousness)
Abstraction offers a portal to the unseen—a way for artists and viewers alike to access spiritual, emotional, and intellectual realms. Here, abstraction becomes a language of wonder, reflection, and radical possibility. These works invite personal introspection and communal resonance by exploring ancestral knowledge, spiritual traditions, and speculative futures. Using color, form, and gesture to spark connection across time and space, these artists show how artistic transcendence can emerge as meditative stillness or explosive energy.
Referencing the intellectual, the celestial, the metaphysical, and even science fiction, these artists stretch abstraction toward the infinite—offering not just escape, but expansion.
I just keep changing, not for the sake of change but for the sake of the search.
Ed Clark
Ed Clark’s The Big Egg
The Big Egg marks Ed Clark’s groundbreaking move from a traditional rectangular canvas to an oval one, representing a breakthrough in American abstract art. Using shaped stretcher bars, he became the first American artist to create an oval painting, opening up a world of possibilities for other artists.
Clark explained his choice of shape by saying, “Our eyes don’t see in rectangles. . . . It seemed to me that the oval as a natural shape could best express movement and extended beyond the limits of the canvas.” In this and other works, Clark used a push broom to apply paint swiftly and broadly across the canvas, imbuing the paint with motion and giving the artwork life.
The Big Egg by Ed Clark, 1968.
The Art of Making Marks
In 1997, following a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis, artist and curator Evangeline (EJ) Montgomery shifted her focus from metalwork to painting and printmaking. In Configurations 6 and Merry-Go-Round, Montgomery undertook nuanced formal and theoretical explorations. She used many small calligraphic markings to create layered swirls of color. With the title and composition of Configurations 6, she referred to the configurations, coding processes, and layered aspects of memory.
Montgomery wrote that much of her art was inspired by the “nuances and richness of surfaces, textures, and brilliant color whether in plants, water, stone, and incredible variation of life forms.”
Configurations 6 by Evangeline J. Montgomery, 1998.
Merry-Go-Round by Evangeline J. Montgomery, 2012.
What did I see to be except myself?
by Kennedy Yanko
What did I see to be except myself? by Kennedy Yanko, 2023.
Kennedy Yanko produces artworks using metal and paint, but she reverses their usual roles. Here, the metal rises and floats above the paint. The paint, rather than being applied to canvas or board, is poured onto plastic sheets then peeled and sculpted into a shaped and solid form. Yanko salvaged the copper in this piece from the original roof of the building in New York City that once housed the National Academy of Design. The title of this sculpture is taken from Lucille Clifton’s poem “won’t you celebrate with me.” According to poet Robin Ekiss, Clifton’s poem suggests the difference “between the lives of others and her own emerging self-consciousness.”
Abstract Redo with Hoodoo
by Danny Simmons
Abstract Redo with Hoodoo by Danny Simmons, 2011.
Danny Simmons is a self-taught artist who describes his work as “Neo-African Abstract Expressionism.” Among his influences are the Surrealism of Wifredo Lam, Abstract Expressionism, and African art. His primary interest is conveying emotion and spirituality through his work. The painting Abstract Redo with Hoodoo was created using bark cloth from the Congo and paint that Simmons created from raw pigments.
Simmons describes the importance of Hoodoo—African American folk spirituality with elements of African traditions—to his work as follows: “I intend for my art to possess the same healing spiritual qualities that traditional African makers put into their sculptures and painting. . . . The hoodoo, or magic, to be found in the work is not in the object itself, but in the intention of the maker.”
Cosmic Slop "Deliver"
by Rashid Johnson
Cosmic Slop “Deliver” is covered with gestural indentations in swirling patterns; the wax used to create the piece also holds significance. Wax and black soap are products made from West African plant ash and tree bark, and they are purported to have healing properties. Rashid Johnson has consistently incorporated the soap in his subtle approach to issues of African American identity, stating: “I have used black soap in my work for a number of years, and I was interested in the fact that it is this material that is often employed by people with sensitive skin.”
Cosmic Slop "Deliver" by Rashid Johnson, 2013.
Untitled (Triple Consciousness) by Rico Gatson, 2022.
Rico Gatson is widely known for his politically charged artworks based on significant moments in African American history. They often combine figuration with bright, geometric abstraction and evocative titles. Some of his pieces abandon representation altogether to explore broader ideas and concepts.
Untitled references the theory that African American women view themselves through three lenses—womanhood, Blackness, and American identity. This theory is an expansion on W. E. B. Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness, which refers to the dual self-perception experienced by Black Americans living in Eurocentric society. The interlocking circles also suggest planetary movement and the vastness of the universe.
Abstraction is my tool for resisting quick categorization. I use simple, generous materials to prod at preconceived notions and slow down how we see, prompting people to keep looking, and look again.
Kennedy Yanko
Making Meaning Through Materials
Many seemingly fully abstract artworks contain hints of narrative, representation, or historical reference. Incorporating reclaimed materials is one method of inserting meaning and significance into works of art. Artists like Chakaia Booker and Shinique Smith transform these domestic common items into artworks that challenge the viewer to make meaning through familiar but completely transformed materials.
Chakaia Booker is known for cutting and manipulating discarded rubber tires into undulating organic textural forms. Through her work, Booker interrogates the role of mass market industry and consumption in American society.
Shinique Smith began creating artworks from secondhand clothing after reading about a thrift store T-shirt in New York that was recycled and shipped to Jinja, Uganda. Smith imbues her abstract artwork with layers of meaning “embedded in the folds” of her materials.
Liquidity of Legacy by Chakaia Booker, 2016.
Chakaia Booker’s The Liquidity of Legacy
According to Chakaia Booker, The Liquidity of Legacy is about the flow and change that shapes a people’s legacy. Through her work, Booker interrogates the role of mass market industry and conspicuous consumption in American society. The materials and title of Liquidity of Legacy can be interpreted as symbolizing the enduring and evolving nature of African and African American historical traditions.
The tears streamed, but inside she was a festival by Shinique Smith, 2022.
Shinique Smith’s The tears streamed, but inside she was a festival
In The tears streamed, but inside she was a festival, Shinique Smith attaches miniature bundles of fabric from used clothing—as well as graffiti-inflected paint markings, splashes of color, and bits of mirror and plastic—to a flat canvas.
Despite the lack of recognizable subject matter, the presence of previously worn clothing adds intimate associations and physicality to Smith’s artwork. As she explains, the articles of clothing are intensely personal; “the trappings, the shedding skins, the little bits make us who we are.” The materials also speak to trends in consumerism, fast fashion, and 21st-century capitalism. They also reference the enslaved laborers who once harvested cotton and the sweatshop laborers now populating factories across the world.
Abstraction in Seating Design
Seating designers transform everyday furnishings into objects of cultural storytelling. Learn how the principles of abstraction—form, line, gesture—shape seating design.
The Awakening
by David Huffman
The Awakening by David Huffman, 2022.
In The Awakening, David Huffman alludes to the cosmic expansion of consciousness through the lens of ancestral legacy and political dynamism. The work calls to mind space and the realities of life on Earth through hard-edged and expressionist abstraction and swatches of traditional textiles from Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal. At the bottom, fabric has been cut to spell the name of Emmett Till, a child whose brutal, racially motivated murder in 1955 by two white men in Mississippi galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Images of the Egyptian sphinx are blended with Huffman’s mother’s profile; basketballs are arrayed alongside the moons of Jupiter and Pluto; and a photographic image of Earth’s moon hovers in the upper right corner.
Duke Delivers by Adger Cowans, 1960.
Adger Cowans views water as a metaphor for the ebb and flow of life. His attraction to the intangible elements of nature drove him to develop a photographic process that captures the fleeting elements of nature, water, and light. In Duke Delivers, which belongs to his Water Spirits series, he captures movement, ripples, and shadows on water. Cowans aimed for these artworks to allow the viewer to “feel with the heart, explore with the eyes, and contemplate with the mind.” Artist Romare Bearden went further, stating that in his water photographs, Cowans “invites us to see a universe in a microcosm.”
Advancing Impulses
by Mildred Thompson
Known for her commitment to abstraction, Mildred Thompson also maintained an interest in physics, astronomy, and the cosmos. In Atlanta, Georgia, she taught art courses on “making the invisible visible” and on theories and practices of Western music. Advancing Impulses is part of a series of paintings representing scientific theories.
The “impulse” in the title, which in physics refers to a force that initiates motion, is here represented in radiating colors and gestures. Thompson associated yellow, a color featured prominently in the background of this painting, with fields of magnetic energy—a natural force that reflects the interaction between objects with magnetic properties.
Advancing Impulses by Mildred Thompson, 1997.