Category: metaphysics

Talon Abraxas

The Artwork of Talon Abraxas

Born in South London, England in 1980, Talon Abraxas is a symbolist artist, writer and occultist whose work consists of both traditional and digital images. Symbolism in painting was a fantastic, often mystic, style that emerged as a reaction to the naturalism of realist and impressionist trends. Symbolist painters believed that art should reflect an emotion or idea rather than represent the natural world in an objective, quasi-scientific manner. This style of painting emphasized the world of dreams and the religious traditions of human transformation; it placed the appearance of literature, music and the arts over their functions.

A self-taught artist, Talon Abraxas regards an artist as a spontaneously developed initiate (Greek: μύστης) whose work conveys spirituality and religious mysteries to the world. The inspiration for his work is drawn from past mystic artists and writers, including English artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare, Belgian symbolist painter and author Jean Delville, Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, and Polish surrealist painter and sculptor Zdislaw Beksiński.  

The Talon Abraxas Facebook site contains many images of Talon Abraxas’s work as well as other contemporary artists: https://www.facebook.com/p/Talon-Abraxas-100050477380184/

Notes: Archons are the  supernatural builders of the physical universe, each one related to one of the seven classical planets visible to the naked eye: the Sun, Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, ordered according to their brightness. Abraxas is the term for the “Great Archon” in Gnostic Christianity. The word is found in such Gnostic texts as the “Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit” and the “Apocalypse of Adam”. Saint Epiphanius of Salamis, the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Salamis, Cyprus at the end of the fourth-century, designated Abraxas (Biblical Greek: ἀβραξάς) to be “the power above all, and First Principle” and “the cause and first archetype” of all things.

Archon (Greek: ἄρχων) is the Greek word that means “ruler”. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem αρχ-, meaning “to rule, to be first”. Throughout Greek history, the term Archon referred to the chief magistrates of various Greek cities. In the Byzantine empire, the term was used to denote a powerful noble or magnate, both domestic and foreign. Today, in Orthodox Christianity, archon is a honorific title given to someone who has served and promoted the Orthodox Church faith and tradition, a sworn duty of the archon. As it is a significant religious position, the faith and dedication of a candidate for the role are reviewed extensively during consideration.

Top Insert Image: Talon Abraxas, “Phoibos (Phoebus) Apollon”, Date Unknown, Digital Art

Bottom Insert Image: Talon Abraxas, “New Jerusalem”, Date Unknown, Digital Art

Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico, “The School of Gladiators, The Fight”, 1928, Oil on Canvas

De Chirico always believed that his early academic training was vital in preparing him for his later work, and this conservative attitude set him apart from other modernists – particularly from the Surrealists who did so much to elevate his reputation. In the 1920s this outlook grew into a renewed belief in the value of craftsmanship and the Old Masters tradition, and it directed a shift in his style towards greater detail, richer color, and more conventionally accurate modeling of forms and volumes, as well as more emphatic references to Renaissance and Baroque art.

Giorgio de Chirico’s “The School of Gladiators: The Fight”, is part of a series of sixty paintings on the theme of gladiators, which de Chirico painted between early 1927 and 1929. Contrary to how he was executing his Metaphysical Period paintings of the 1910s, de Chirico in the 1920s applied thick, dense, short brush strokes. Moreover, the palette changed, becoming more hearty and brownish.

Phyllis Stapler

Phyllis Stapler, “The Moon Hare”

“Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions sown are directly valid for all mankind.”

         Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Joan Ponç

Joan Ponç, “Fisik”, 1981, Oil on Canvas

Joan Ponç was born in Barcelona in 1927. His training as an artist began by studying painting in the workshop of Spainish painter and draughtsman Ramon Rogent. Ponç presented his first exhibition at the Sala Arte de Bilbao at the age of twenty.

Soon after his exhibition, Ponç founded the magazine “Dau al Set”, along with other great artists such as Joan Brossa, Modest Cuixart, Arnau Puig, Joan-Josep Antoni Tapies and Tharrats. This magazine meant the reviving of the creative impulse in post-war decayed Barcelona, Over the next couple of years, Ponç actively interacted and collaborated with forerunners of the Catalan avant-garde, such as Modest Cuixart and Joan Miró. Though the Dau al Set group ultimately disbanded in 1954, Ponç continued presenting his own artwork until 1980.

On April 4, 1984, Ponç died of a heart attack while at his home inSaint-Paul-de-Vence, France. Four days later, he was returned to his residence and workshop in La Roca del Vallés, near Barcelona, for burial.

My thanks to https://pixography.tumblr.com