United Kingdom, 1954
John Edmiston is a self-taught visionary artist who paints in a deep-trance altered-state. As a child he saw shapes and apparitions that either calmed or frightened him. He has since learnt how to go into deep meditative trance to enter these inner worlds. The trance states are short-lived - usually two to three hours - so he paints quickly and on a small scale. These altered states are like a meeting-ground, a transcendent inner realm, a sacred inner space, a journey into the unconscious, into the unknown; to meet ancestors, to meet spirits, to meet whatever is there. He uses automatic modes to initiate the creative process and views any work that is brought forth to be a footprint of the encounter, a surviving fragment, a physical trace of the inner vision, a remnant, all that remains of the experience. He believes if humanity fully understood the continuance of consciousness beyond the death of the physical body it would make for an enormous shift in both personal and collective evolution. He is represented in private collections, in the permanent collection of The College of Psychic Studies, London and in the Collection of Mediumistic Art, Munich. He also writes and his novel 'Ujung Kulon' was written in a trance-altered state. He is represented by the Henry Boxer Gallery, London.