Illumination

The Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce
Merrell Publishers Ltd 2009

Karen Moss, Art and Life Illuminated: Georgia O'Keeffe and Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce
The influence of the light and forms of the New Mexico desert environment, which AP discovered in 1921 and GO'K in 1929, then in a later generation, AM and FMP. All were to live a large part of their lives in this and other deserts. They had grown up in different locations and each developed their own artistic vocabulary that fused abstract and spiritual concerns with their connection with the natural environment.

AP and GO'K both born in 1880s, raised in Christian families, went to study art in NY where they came under the influence of Arthur Wesley Dow who taught the first generation of american Modernists and drew on Asian art.  AP spent a year studying in Italy and on her return produced work that was a part of the flourishing Symbolist art movement.  Both artists in the 1910s were living and exhibiting in NY.

'My first memory is of the brightness of light - light all around.' GO'K 
1916-18 she was working in Texas where she produced watercolours full of light - sunrises and starry skies - plus small abstract paintings.

AP moved to rural Long Island in 1920 from where she travelled extensively to Middle East, Greece and Hawaii.  Kept journals that included reflections on art and spirituality. Etheric flower studies.

Mid-20s - early 30s both produced landscapes that combine representation and abstraction, often with strong sources of illumination.

AP studied theosophy in which light is a symbol of natural and supernatural phenomena. Painted celestial landscapes in which stars represented enlightenment.
'These pictures are conceptions of light - the essence of fire, not as we see it in the material world, but as the radiance of inner being.' 
Also studied Agni Yoga, an offshoot of theosophy and in 1938 joined the Transcendental Painting Group which promoted abstract art.

In 1932 AP had moved to a California desert town where she lived for the next 30 years in relative isolation.  GO'K settled in New Mexico.  The desert and its light entered their paintings. Right into their late work they fused landscape/nature with inner vision, animated by light.

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Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce were a generation later, born in the 1910s into Christian families.  Both trained in the east but gravitated to Taos.

FMP joined the TPG with Pelton in1938.

AM's early work was abstract but referred to nature.  Gradually became purely abstract, geometric.  She reduced her vocabulary specifically to express light.
'My paintings have neither object nor space nor line nor anything - no forms. . . They are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down forms.'
Greatly influenced by Ad Reinhardt and his interest in Eastern art and philosophy; had attended DT Suzuki's lectures in NY in 1950s.  Often wrote of trying to express a blissful, egoless state in her art.

AP in the late 60s had a happy accident, spilling liquid resin onto aluminium creating a shimmering, luminous effect.  Began to work with resin on mirrors to create free-form abstractions, 'lucamorphs' (= light body).  Interested in Zen and Tantric Buddhism.
'My works are contemplative.  They're about stilling the mind.'

Both working into their 80s, light becoming more and more predominant, works emanating light.  Light was the basis of their abstract art rather than form.  

For both the desert made possible a particular appreciation of light and also a purer state of consciousness.  Light communicates something about the ineffable quality of nature and the mind.