Why Transcendental Art Is Beyond Symbolism
- artbykarma
- Sep 15
- 4 min read
Why Transcendental Art Is Beyond Symbolism
When most people think of symbolism in art, they imagine recognizable icons: a dove for peace, a skull for mortality, or a rose for love. Religious and indigenous art often functions symbolically as well — gods, goddesses, and sacred figures act as conceptual anchors for meaning, morality, and ritual. They guide behavior, encode cosmologies, and connect viewers to shared spiritual or ethical frameworks. Symbols give the unseen a form that can be understood, revered, and followed conceptually on a mental level.
But transcendental art operates on a different plane. It does not depict a deity, narrate a moral story, or provide a symbolic guide. Instead, it seeks to evoke, not signify; to draw the viewer into direct experience, beyond language, narrative, or representation.
The Limits of Symbolism
Symbols are culturally bound. A religious icon or an indigenous motif relies on shared knowledge to communicate meaning. Their power lies in recognition and understanding. But this very reliance also sets limits: the experience is mediated through interpretation, history, or ritual. You need to understand or belong to the culture to appreciate it. In today’s globalized, digitally connected world, this can sometimes create more division than unity, which feels paradoxical given that many spiritual, indigenous, and religious practices ultimately aim to foster Oneness.
Transcendental art bypasses this mediation. Its forms, colors, and spatial relationships do not signify a moral or cosmological lesson — they activate perception, creating encounters with energy, consciousness, and presence itself. You do not decode transcendental art; you inhabit it. It forces the viewer to ask — well, what is it? How do I feel? and does it have to be something?
Consider Hilma af Klint. Her geometric and organic forms in Paintings for the Temple are not visual stand-ins for spirits or divine laws — they are expressions of unseen forces. They invite viewers to experience those forces directly, beyond words or doctrine.
Experience Over Representation
Transcendental abstraction privileges direct, lived experience over meaning-making. While symbolic religious or ritual art situates the viewer within a moral, spiritual, or mythological framework, transcendental works pull the viewer into the present moment itself, where perception, awareness, and consciousness converge.
Agnes Pelton’s radiant orbs, flames, and crystalline forms, for instance, are not symbolic illustrations. They vibrate, shimmer, and resonate — creating a meditative space in which the viewer’s attention and awareness are fully engaged.
The Role of Patterns
One thing that has always fascinated me about transcendental art is its use of patterns — repeating forms, rhythms, and structures that feel both deliberate and organic. This is not unique to contemporary abstraction; indigenous and religious art from around the world often incorporates intricate patterns, whether in textiles, ceremonial objects, or sacred architecture. Many of these patterns are inspired by nature — leaves, waves, celestial bodies, or the branching of rivers and trees — and they seem to carry a universal resonance, a visual language that speaks beyond words.
In transcendental art, patterns function similarly: they create a sense of flow, rhythm, and connection, guiding the viewer’s attention and offering a space to inhabit rather than a story to interpret. Even in their complexity, these patterns often convey a subtle harmony, reminding me that the intricate structures of the natural world — and of consciousness itself — can coexist with balance, beauty, and presence.
Contemporary painters such as Molly Greene explore similar ideas in new ways. Her organic, surreal forms — hair, plants, and amorphous bodies — evoke transformation, boundary fluidity, and relationality. Greene’s work bypasses intellectual interpretation, allowing viewers to engage directly with intuition, emotion, and perception.
Abstraction as a Transcendental Tool
Abstraction allows transcendental art to exist beyond cultural, linguistic, or symbolic constraints.
Color conveys energy, presence, and mood.
Form evokes motion, growth, or stillness.
Composition generates tension, harmony, or spatial meditation.
Like ritual, meditation, or music, transcendental abstraction creates an immersive experience that cannot be fully articulated in words. Unlike symbolic art, it is not a guide to meaning; it is the experience of meaning unfolding in real time.
Inspiration
From Hilma af Klint’s visionary geometries to Agnes Pelton’s luminous abstractions, Joan Mitchell’s gestural expanses, and Molly Greene’s uncanny biomorphic forms, I feel a quiet thread of continuity in transcendental art — the sense that the unseen cannot be fully represented, only experienced and felt.
My own work is part of this ongoing exploration. Growing up with a mixed cultural identity, I found myself drawn to studying various religious and spiritual practices as a way to make sense of my frequent identity crises. Over time, this curiosity led me to painting as a means of exploring presence, consciousness, and the ineffable. By blending analog and digital techniques, organic forms, surreal geometries, and feminist perspectives, I try to create paintings that offer a space for reflection and experience. I hope my canvases invite viewers into a moment of perception and presence, without dictating meaning — they are experiences, intended to awaken the senses and imagination in a personal way.
To Sum It Up
For me, transcendental art is less about conveying meaning and more about opening a space for experience. It moves beyond symbolic representation, ritual, and narrative, inviting both myself and the viewer into the immediacy of the present moment. We are all part of the tribe of humanity, and creatively express that in the beauty of all our cultures and beliefs.
Abstraction feels like a doorway — to perception, to spirit, and to the ineffable. I see it as a reminder that art’s power lies not in instructing us on what to see, but in allowing us to quietly experience what lies beyond words.
As always, thank you for Being here,
-Karma.
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