The art world passed up the psychedelic art movement because of the illegal drug association with it. The psychedelic art movement was never given the public exposure that Pop Art received. Later, "visionary" art was accepted into galleries, having cleaned up the psychedelic stigma, but psychedelic art was and is a unique phenomenon. Psychedelic art reflected real visions seen in altered states of consciousness. Psychedelic art connected Western Civilization art with art and designs seen in thousands of Oriental religious paintings and sculptures as well as Pre-Colombian New World art motifs. The connection is deep in the subconscious of the human mind.
Psychedelic visions are incredibly powerful. As an artist with a fair knowledge of art produced around the world, I can honestly say psychedelic visions put all human made art works to shame. The visions are tremendously complex and detailed, in constant motion and change, and in 3-D. Not even computer generated art can hold a candle to the infinitely detailed complexity and endless variety of psychedelic visions. My Ariel Lome painting below represents a brief glimpse of a psychedelic vision that was in constant motion. To me, comparing my painting to the actual imagery I saw behind my eyes is like comparing an early Civil War black and white photograph with the latest super-cinemascope movie, the imagery is that beyond my or anyone's current ability to reproduce it. In the old movie Forbidden Planet there was a machine left over from a previous civilization, the Krell, which could transform mental thoughts into holographic entities. Art in the future may be done with some sort of Krell machine that can transfer psychic visions seen only in the mind of the artist to holographic reality so that others can marvel at the amazing art produced in the human brain which for millennia only a few visionary prone people were and are able to see. Shown below are some representative pieces: * * *
Crucifixion (1968)
The Ariel Lome painting (1975)
In the year 2000 this painting fell when a large screw on which it was hung had worked loose over the years. The upper right hand quadrant was damaged. A fairly substantial hole was punched through the formica-board on which this acrylic painting was painted. Not knowing a thing about painting restoration and too poor to even consider hiring an expert I didn't know what to do as it was impossible for me to reproduce the original parts of the painting where there was now a jagged hole. I thought of dividing the painting up into quadrants and excluding the damaged one but that was too drastic. What to do..I've never gone back and repaired or changed a painting and also I've also moved on in my painting style preferring to do texture paintings now over hard-edged flat ones. Well, "It's meant to be", I said to myself and proceeded to begin a new phase of the painting's life by filling in the damaged area with semi-amorphous texture images. To balance out the painting as a whole the new texture imagery will be continued throughout all the formerly black areas of the painting. When finished it wil no longer be the "Ariel Lome" painting of 1975 but the "Ariel Salome" painting of 2006. When Ariel Salome is completed I will post its image here.
Spiritually inspired visions
These visions are in motion so it is not possible for me to paint them. Actually, I don't have the technical skill to do them justice even as stopped motion pictures. So they remain verbal pictures until perhaps some day they can be made into digital motion pictures. I have made one short experimental animation film back in my youth when I was pursuing a career in film making. That 3 minute film became part of an experimental movie program shown in the Cinema Theatre in Hollywood circa 1965.
Below are listed my two religious visions:
The Ship of Light
The Ship of Light is a painting in motion of a ship in the shape of Noah's Ark except that it's sides are not made of gopher wood but gemstones set in twelve rows following the order of gemstones in found in Rev 21:19,20 for the description of the foundation stones of New Jerusalem.
The Ship of Light has two masts which are tall trees like redwoods, one symbolizing the Tree of Knowledge and the other, the Tree of Life. The trees are the Ship's masts and sails. At the helm of the Ship of Light's twelve spoke wheel stand Christ Jesus and Christ Josephine with arms around each other as they steer the Ship of Light down from the sky into a sheltered cove where thousands of people await its arrival.
The Vision of Christ Josephine
In the vision Josephine is walking determinedly but with a smiling face as she marches through a fierce blizzard snow in a bright moonlit night. She is in buckskins and wears quivers of corn and grains and holds sunflowers in her left hand. In her right hand she holds the reins attached to a large white buffalo as she leads him through the blizzard. No snow covers her--it is as if an invisible bubble surrounds her as she marches through the blizzard.
Over her shoulder a full moon shines through the storm. And behind her as she guides the buffalo the snow disappears leaving an ever-widening swath of growing green grass, flowers, fruit trees, and animals and birds of all kinds. In the distance behind her and the buffalo the dawn is beginning with the sun just beginning to rise above the horizon in a cloudless sky.
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