Stephen Newton: Artistic creation & transcendental feeling

I'm currently reading 'The Spiritual Unconscious: Stephen Newton - Paintings and Drawings 1975-96'. Newton argues that there is an abstract ‘core’ of creativity which generates the spirituality of both the icon and the abstract.

He quotes Wilhelm Worringer from 'Abstraction and Empathy':

‘To transcendentalism of religion there always corresponds a transcendentalism of art, for which we lack the organ of understanding only because we obstinately insist upon appraising the vast mass of factual material in the whole field of art from the narrow angle of vision of our European-Classical conception. We perceive transcendental feeling in the content, to be sure; but we overlook it in the real core of the process of artistic creation, the activity of the form-determining will’.

'It is this abstract ‘core’ of creativity which generates the spirituality of both the icon and the abstract. It is this access through the materiality of form to a communion with the supernatural and an ek-stasis which invoked the wrath of the iconoclasts, and not, as is usually assumed, because the image of the deity is figuratively symbolised.'

'The original genesis of such a spirituality is in creative structure and experience, which arguably underpins art, religion and also psychoanalysis. Put simply, this creative experience might generally be described as involving some sort of transcendental, therapeutic, transformative and ecstatic process, which can involve actual ek-stasis , an ‘out of body’ experience ...

This spiritual, creative structure turns up in various guises throughout human history; in mysticism; in ancient oracles; in African tribal dance and ritual; in all religious and spiritual experience; and throughout mythology. I think its most recent genuine or ‘authentic’ manifestation is in the advent of modern abstract art, as practised in its purest sense by artists such as Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko, De Kooning, Guston and others.'

Newton's work is included in the Priseman Seabrook Collection which was established by British artist Robert Priseman and his wife Ally Seabrook in 2014. The collection is formed into three categories – 21st Century British Painting, 20th and 21st Century British Works on Paper and Contemporary Chinese Works on Paper. The focus of each collection is on painting and drawing made by hand. Priseman also founded ‘Contemporary British Painting’, an artist led organisation which exhibits in the crypt of St Marylebone  Parish Church exploring and promoting current trends in British painting through group exhibitions, talks, publications and the donation of paintings to art museums. 

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Enya - Echoes In Rain.