Session 1 : 13 December 2022 6.30 music for 7 pm start AEDT (Sydney) "The Power of the Artist."

To open the Art & Mysticism series the "Power of the Artist" is a session to introduce the nature of mysticism in the arts through exploring the "power of the artist" in the great art they have created. Artists have many powers: to record history and appearances, to create propaganda for movements and ideas, to entertain, to externalise our inner life of emotion and dreams into vivid imagery, to face our deepest fear and joy and create art that reflects our spiritual quest through the ages. Indeed, some say that the creation of art made us human.

The greatest power of the artist is to transform consciousness - please join us in this journey with the great unknown artists of Palaeolithic times, ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, to greats such as Hildegard, Durer, Grunwald and Michelangelo, through to modern times with Van Gogh, Picasso, Hilma af Klint, Magritte and David Bowie - to be shocked, delighted and amazed at the "Power of the Artist" to change our consciousness.

Q and A is welcome throughout the session.

Session 2: 15 February 6.30 music for 7 pm start AEDT (Sydney). "Making the Invisible Visible."

The human eye only perceives a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, a small band of the frequencies of visible light. In another sense the human mind and psyche perceives only a small fraction of the reality that we may experience. Artists have always gifted humanity their ability to perceive and create a vision of what is beyond the visible.

Artists such as the anonymous artisans, who created ancient Egyptian art, the artists of the Salon Rose+Croix, Odilon Redon, Albrecht Durer, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Poussin, Rene Magritte and Picasso who wove mystic wisdom in their work which makes the invisible visible. We will explore the esoteric symbolism of Redon, Durer, Holbein, Magritte, Botticelli’s Primavera, Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, Poussin’s Shepherds of Arcadia, Rembrandt’s kabbalist paintings and Picasso’s tarot influenced early paintings and his alchemic conceptual and material practice in the painting of his revolutionary Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

Session 3: 14 March , 6.30 music for 7 pm start AEDT (Sydney). "The Power of the Vision."

Artists reveal the power of the vision for what Humanity may achieve. The power of an individual artist’s personal mystic vision to change human consciousness as expressed in the work of Monet, William Blake, Sengai, Nicholas Roerich, Bernini, Hilma af Klint, Colin McCahon, Montien Boonma, Ian Fairweather, James Turrell’s Canberra Sky Dome and Earth Art from Stonehenge to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. We will also explore the mystic visions of Stanley Kubrick, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, together with the sacred architectural visions of Hagia Sophia and Chartres Cathedral.

The painter Godfrey Miller once said: “Each brushstroke I make touches the furthest star” - such is the power of the vision of artists to touch our consciousness, empower and renew our personal vision of what our life may aspire to be.