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

Denis Forkas

The Paintings of Denis Forkas

Born in 1977 in Kamyshin, a town on the Volga river, Denis Forkas Kostromitin is a Russian painter whose work explores religious and mythological symbolism in the tradition of ancient Mediterranean art. The son of a military officer, his childhood years were spent in various remote regions of the Soviet states. Forkas’s early nomadic existence with its isolation and lack of comforts led to self-education in artistic training and numerous sensory deprivation experiences, which later had a major impact on his artwork.

With little stimulus from the austere Soviet environment, Forkas eagerly consumed literature on the esoteric worlds of Egyptian and Greek mysticism and mythology. After the iron curtain’s collapse in 1991, new translations of literary works, including the esoteric writings of English occultist Aleister Crowley and French author Eliphas Levi, entered the Soviet states. Forkas studied these new volumes and the literature written by Western philosophers, which became available in the mid-1990s.

After the economic boom in the new century, Denis Forkas frequently visited China as a journalist, interpreter, and commercial representative. After meeting several painting masters in China, he was able to receive formal training for three years in traditional Eastern painting techniques, including those of the Xieyl and Gongbi art forms.

Xieyl is a genre of Chinese traditional painting worked on xuan paper that uses either ink or layers of watercolor. This genre includes works of calligraphy, poem, painting and seal, of which freehand painting is the most influential and popular. Gongbi is a careful, realistic technique of Chinese painting, often highly-colored, that is worked on xuan paper. This method uses highly-detailed brushstrokes that delineate details very precisely without interpretation or free expression on the part of the artist.

After leaving China, Forkas settled in Moscow to concentrate on his career path as a professional artist. His early work was inspired by German Expressionism and the late nineteenth-century Symbolist movement, which emphasized the reality of the created paint surface itself. These paintings by Forkas were influenced by the early abstract, experimental works of Wassily Kandinsky that, in an immediate way, were an expression of Kandinsky’s inner feelings.

Denis Forkas’s new work, still in the artistic traditions of ancient Near East civilizations, draw their inspiration from early Renaissance and seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Drifting away from the earlier predominant symbolist style, Forkas’s paintings became influenced by the works of Belgian painter Fernand Khnopff, who carried symbolism’s recurring themes into his portraits, and Russian painter Mikhail Vrubel, whose paintings in the latter portion of his life displayed a glowing, otherworldly mosaic effect that fit within the Byzantine tradition.

Since 2007, Forkas has privately taught the techniques of painting and drawing to students and has participated in various local and international exhibitions, including the October 2014 Image Show in London. Forkas has produced many drawings and paintings that have been featured as album covers for international music releases. Currently living and working in Moscow, he has contributed both work and an interview for the esoteric publisher Fulgur Press.

Contact information and a small gallery of work by Forkas can be found at his website located at: www.denisforkas.com

For those interested, a list of album cover art by Denis Forkas can be found at the Encyclopaedia Mettalum site located at: https://www.metal-archives.com/artists/Denis_Forkas_Kostromitin/436114

Second Insert Image: Denis Forkas, “The Hanged Man / Gift of Prometheus”, 2017, Acrylics and Gilding on Paper, 41.5 x 29.5 cm

Third Insert Image: Denis Forkas, “Saglokratlok II”, 2017, Ink and Gouache on Paper, 24.1 x 18.5 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Denis Forkas, “Between Two Worlds (Study for a Recurring Dream of Ichor Baptism Fashioned as a Portico Fresco Cartoon)”, 2016, Acrylics on Paper on Hardboard, 23.7 x 22.5 cm

Jakob Bohme

Jakob Bohme, “Theosphische Wercke (Theosophical Work)”, 1682, Amsterdam

Jakob Bohme was a German mystic, philosopher and Christian theosophist. His influence was evident in Germany, the Netherlands and England, as well as in Sweden and Finland. Among the Quakers in the United States, he also found enthusiastic followers. In 1682, fifty-eight years after his death, all of his works were published together for the first time. This image illustrates the wheel of properties of the seven planets.

Nicholas Kalmakoff

Illustrations by Nicholas Kalmakoff

Born in Nervi on the Italian Riviera in 1873, Nicolai Kalmakoff was born into a privileged existence. His father was a Russian General; his mother of Italian descent. Unlike most Russian aristocrats, he was baptized a Roman Catholic rather than a Russian Orthodox (due, no doubt, to his Italian mother).

Kalmakoff’s German governess was fond of Grimm’s fairy tales, and these left a lasting impression on his childhood imagination. As Kalmakoff later recounted: “She made me live in an imaginary world taken from the Brothers Grimm with a sprinkling of E.T.A. Hoffmann. I devoured those tales with delight. Around the age of nine I would often wander into the furthermost room of our house, where I would carefully conceal myself. Then, alone in the darkness, I would call upon the devil to appear.”

http://visionaryrevue.com/webtext3/kal1.html