Paradigm Shift: Mindful Art to Visionary Art

About four months ago, painting inspirations began arriving in my mind an entirely different way than before and demanded a whole new approach to line, color, composition, and process.

It's been challenging, but feels more authentic, personal, and important to me than any style I've learned previously. Here was the first one that occurred:

Cliff (2026), acrylic on canvas. 40"x40", (c) Kristine Burneko

For the first two years of my journey into abstract painting, I used a very mindfulness-oriented approach. I learned to "listen" to what the paint was telling me and how to "read" where the image naturally wanted to go. I responded to the colors and lines on the canvas instinctively and very much in-the-moment. Painting was a very grounding and soothing practice. During those years, outside the studio I was also working to deepen my daily meditation practice.

During intense (or simple, depending on your point of view) meditation, images increasingly dropped into my mind fully-formed and ready to capture. Apparently this approach to artwork is called "visionary art" due to the emergence of the visions. Attempting to create this way required an entirely different approach to my work; a radical change in my process became necessary. Rather than "find" the shapes and colors the moment I grabbed the paintbrush, I had to learn to plan my work. The fully-formed images required measurement for accuracy and a very careful attention to color if I was going to communicate them clearly.

I reactivated skills I haven't used since my earliest painting and portraiture classes: making sketch after sketch until the proportions were just so; using the grid method to translate the small sketches into large images on canvas, testing my paint mixes ahead of time before I slapped them onto the canvas, and the very hardest: mixing the extremely specific colors the visions required. For example, there were a few particular hues of of green I needed during this one that did not come ready-mixed in a tube:

Cave (2026), acrylic on wood panel, 30"x40". (c) Kristine Burneko

I was flummoxed. Fortunately I have a very good mentor, who was able to look at my rough sketches and easily describe the recipe for the exact color I was looking for. He also loaned me 4 or 5 books on color theory that I subsequently plowed through.

There have been several more - in fact, I'm just about to finish another one. The more I meditate, the more of them occur! I learn new things every time, and I'm really looking forward to diving even deeper into this New Way.