I've been thinking a lot about this artist named Hilma af Klint. She worked with color theory and abstraction at the same time as Kandinsky, completely independently. No one ever knew about the subject of her work because she kept it completely secret. She made 1000 works of art in her lifetime which were kept in a box for twenty years before being revealed, as requested in her will. Af Klint thought that if people knew what she was doing, they would lock her up in an insane asylum. And they probably would have. The inspiration for her work was partially her occupation as a botanist and landscape painter, but she also though much about higher spirits. She was part of "The Five" a group of women who performed seances and communicated with Mystics.
She used something called automatic drawing. She believed that the spirits guided her hand when she made these works. This idea of innate concepts and taking visuals from the minds eye rather than reality is tangentially related to what I'm doing, which is why I initially started to look back at her work. I really love everything about it and feel like it's influenced a lot of the work I've made since becoming aware of her. In a subconscious way that I didn't really realize (maybe she is moving my hand from behind the grave! Oooooo- spooky, halloween themed post).
If you're interested, here is a NYT article about her.
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