The Eye of God

Georgiana Houghton was a British artist, spiritualist medium, and one of the earliest pioneers of abstract art. Although she was largely forgotten for more than a century, she is now recognized as a very innovative figure whose work anticipated non-representational abstraction decades before artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint.

Houghton believed that spirits guided her hand while she worked. Rather than viewing herself as the sole creator of her drawings, she described herself as a medium through whom spirits—including deceased relatives, angels, and even Old Masters—communicated visually. In her 1871 exhibition, the works were attributed "through whose mediumship they have been executed," emphasizing this collaborative relationship between artist and spirit. Like many of her drawings, The Eye of God abandons conventional representation in favor of intricate networks of color, line, and symbolic form. The image does not seek to depict God in a literal sense, it is pure abstraction before it was invented.

P.S. Another abstract artist who saw herself as a medium was Hilma af Klint. Take a closer look at her spiritual and artistic journey towards abstraction. If you like it, you can order one of her masterpieces as a custom-made premium print!  :)