The following article is part of a series exploring visionary art, which I unabashedly argue to be the most powerful and relevant art today. These articles will feature in my upcoming book: Visionary Art — from its ancient origins to today’s painters at the vanguard of cultural transformation.
Readers are invited to check out my other articles here on Medium, which include an Introduction to Visionary Art as well as features on visionary artists from diverse historical ages and places, including Michelangelo and Luke Brown.
Here we will explore the phenomenal work of Amanda Sage, who I was honored to converse with about her work. She generously reviewed this article as well and added useful ideas and corrections.
Now let us dive in…
American artist Amanda Sage (b. 1978) has forged a leadership role in the international visionary art community. Her vibrant creative gifts are recognized by her many students as well as elder mentors alike, and her work has become representative of the motifs and style of much contemporary visionary art.
A native of Boulder, Colorado, Sage’s early artistic skills developed amidst an education of homeschooling and attending Waldorf School. She was early on attracted to the Italian renaissance giants — Leonardo, Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo –and sought to absorb their style by copying their work with colored pencils. A year after high school, Sage traveled to Vienna to study painting with Michael Fuchs, and then eventually with his illustrious father Ernst Fuchs, in each of their respective studio workshops. This helped position Sage in a nexus of visionary art, making many friendships and connections with renowned artists extending to Martina Hoffman, Robert Venosa, Philip Rubinov Jacobson, Brigid Marlin, and Laurence Caruana. Her contributions to these studio environments were valued by her elder colleagues. Sage describes the creative synergy of the workshop environment in an interview:
“The way I studied was also very much an act of service, and a different kind of exchange…of going into a reciprocal kind of relationship, of…’I’m going to show you something, and you’re going to respond with giving your absolute best by helping me with my own work too’…this is [like] where the old masters you learned in the studio very closely with the master, and this is what we do in the workshops, we paint together.” — Art & Life with Amanda Sage — Youtube Video CoSM Podcast
Sage thrived in this environment and has since developed an extraordinary style showcasing fluid, harmonious energies. Her paintings ripple and flow with light interphasing throughout the composition. Her novel use of the Mischtechnik has made layering of these rhythmic energies distinctive of her work.
In Regenerating Heaven on Earth (2019 Acrylic, casein, and oil on canvas 36”x48”) we encounter these energies in the act of churning through a toxified landscape to regenerate it anew. In the upper central axis we see an egg-seed, electric with potential life. Surging harmoniously around it and into the lower landscape flows the regenerating power of twin dragon-serpents. These divine creatures, limned with royal manes of eyes, lead a flowing train of biodiversity in the path of an infinity symbol that organizes the composition. They spiral and dance in the motion of a double-helix, which suggests their fundamental role in the vitality and structure of life itself. Their dance is resonant both with celestial forces and those of terrestrial nature, perhaps one-and-the-same in this vision of healing and renewal. The colors too amplify the sense of pulsing life and suggest a universality in their incorporation of the full visible spectrum. Centered in the lower area is the circular community arrangement of Burning Man. We will encounter the community circle in many of Sage’s paintings, rooting their vision in a community practice where we “remember ourselves, each other, and the Earth.” Burning Man has been a powerful influence on Sage, which she describes not as a “festival” but as “a gathering that happens at the end of the world in the desert…a massive experiment in cultural exchange”. Amidst this community circle, the healing power of the upper worlds flows down into the darker, polluted cities to regenerate, heal, transform, and enlighten. This perennial dynamic between celestial and earthly planes permeates the visionary and spiritual traditions of the world and reverberates here through Sage’s unique creative lens.
The egg-seed motif recurs in many of Sage’s paintings, which she discovered in a vision for a painting entitled Dreams (2006 FB). It has served as a “protective” form to develop and manifest her visionary art from a unique point of origin. Both beautifully simple and cosmically profound, Sage has explored the egg-seed motif perhaps more fully than any other artist, and this brilliant discovery rewards endless contemplation and reflection.
In Vitruvian Human (2016 12”x16” acrylic casein and oil on wood) we see one of the egg-seed’s transformative permutations. A female figure steps into the cosmic role of Leonardo’s renowned Vitruvian Man-as-measure of all things. Here, both Man and Woman-as-measure transform via color, dynamism, and vital abundance structured through the egg and rectangle dynamic rather than circle and square. Sage uses the word “Regenaissance” to express the vanguard cultural transformation of our times that reverberates with the earlier Italian Renaissance exemplified by Leonardo. Flowers wreath out from the center in contours suggestive of ovaries. A divine cup of life crowns the pinnacle, giving and receiving helixes of spectral light. Each of the six vortices along the egg’s perimeter burst outward with sparkling rays.
In the figure, Sage amplifies the feature already present in Leonardo’s work — that of four arms and four legs — to reveal what are actually two figures: a woman in front and man standing behind, supporting and aligned with her in unity. Originally depicting only the woman, late in the painting process Sage shifted course to integrate both woman and man, the union of which became essential to express the full vision. Butterflies flutter as perennial embodiments of transformation. In the background, we see both urban and natural environments harmonized in a utopian celebration of humanity in balance. The impression here is not of subverting Leonardo’s original drawing; after her early years spent enamored of the Renaissance masters, Sage transcends and includes his design with a balancing vision of humanity for the twenty-first century. The stoic idealism of Leonardo’s drawing contrasts beautifully with the lush, playful richness of Sage’s version. It emblazons a new vision for the Regenaissance of our own time, a “regenerating birth” from the cosmic egg.
The being we encounter in Earth Guardian (2018) presents another protagonist that defies categorization. Deity, healer, protector — the many qualities the (possibly androgynous) figure embodies unite harmoniously in streaming, radiant light. As in many of Sage’s works, landscapes suggest sacred spaces within the imagination — spaces that we can bring to manifest in our shared physical world. The Earth Guardian holds their hands before their heart protectively, and also seems to direct rays of light along the fingers’ trajectories. Rainbows shimmer outward from the heart as well, creating finely interpenetrating rhythms like ripples on a lake. Blooming from the head are softly fluttering feathers and psychedelic plants including cannabis leaves. The third eye blazes with yellow radiance, and from this point launches another double-helix of patterned serpent-like forms flowing upward that ultimately unite with further streams of light. Amidst this shimmering dance we see a river landscape populated with buildings in a lush, green environment. Winding alongside the river is a train, a further recurring motif that (as we will see in the next painting) has inspired many of Sage’s creative endeavors. At the painting’s center is a detail described by Sage not to be missed:
“Above the crown there is a rainbow blanket with many people gathering around it. This is a vision and prayer for the coming together of humanity in service for the earth. It is time to lay down the weapons and welcome a new way forward. We will sing this song over and over as it becomes embedded in our DNA… we must practice peace in every little way before it will resonate in the big way…” (Tumblr post)
This central, sacred community space is a locus of intention embodied in Sage’s oeuvre. The Earth Guardian is at once the manifestation of this noble intention, as well as a protector of that intention for those of us who cultivate it within. By holding in our mind the many elements of the composition and focusing on the nexus of yellow light, we can experience the illuminating force of a mighty spirit bursting forth. Transformation is available to us as we encounter the vision, embrace the community, and honor the earth in order to build a radiant future of creative hyper-abundance.
Sage brings many of these ideas together in the exuberant glory of The Great Wave of Trainsformation (2021 acrylic, casein, and oil on canvas 48”x60”). This painting is a collaboration with her partner Joseph Robert Merritt, who is also an accomplished artist and architect. We recognize here aspects of Sage’s style identified in previous paintings: the colors, flora, infinity symbol, and train emerge once again. The thrust of the great wave drives a train of high eco-technology onward. Amidst the crest of the wave we see not only water phasing in and out of serpentine twists and psychedelic plants, but populated by people of numerous spiritual traditions gazing onward with an uplifted vision of the future: a Native American near a peace-pipe, artists, buddhas, and other visionaries. Several figures blast calls to truth and glory with trumpets invoking biblical authority. A virile yellow sun ignites the scene with rays nourishing the blossoming life throughout.
In the onrushing waters, we find another small yet essential detail: each light in the water is a flame surrounded by a community circle. For Sage, these circles are people remembering what has already been extracted from the Earth, represented as the holes beneath the flames. These reconciliatory circles both face the loss of the past and generate new flames of healing at the center. In the background, a toxified city smolders in ruin as it is overwhelmed by the titanic force of new life and new paradigms. The train emits not toxic black smoke but rather plant-blooming wisps of healing incense. Diverse themes are embedded in the cars of the train, housing green technologies and inclusive cultural symbols. These bring clarity and sophistication to ground the vision’s enthusiasm in real-world, practical movements that we can participate in by “boarding” the train.
For Sage, these themes are not merely visual images and ideas; she along with many visionary artists today is building real-world platforms to manifest multidimensional spiritual visions in practical, sober, comprehensive social change. In fact, much of Sage’s creative work is not only in painting but in teaching and community-building. She has taught many students the Mischtechnik in painting transmitted from Ernst and Michael Fuchs. She initiated a platform called the Vision Train which is an ongoing 24/7 digital space for artists to “board” online and create artwork alongside others internationally. From Vision Train emerged another inspiring platform, the ViTra Academy, an online resource for artists offering courses that “champion the arts as sacred, relevant, and critical to our lives”. She has pursued the concept of the Artifactory: the communal transformation of abandoned industrial spaces into centers for the arts, gardening, and local resources. She has already helped facilitate such spaces in Colorado and Vienna. These various projects implement core principles expressed in visionary art as change not just at the personal level of artist and viewer, but at dynamic community levels that cultivate unity, healing, transformation, and growth in the “real world”, extending even into the political. This kind of creative community work Sage calls “artivism”, surely a most potent concept. The joyous momentum of trainsformation is something we are all invited to board and ride into an uplifted future together.
To see more of Amanda’s work, check out her website: www.amandasage.com or her Istagram: @amandasageart
To dive in and further explore visionary art — its history, shamanic connections, and its past/present/future artists including Michelangelo, William Blake, Hilma af Klint, Luke Brown and more — visit my Medium profile page.
This article will be included in my upcoming book: Visionary Art. Comments, questions, and thoughts are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!
Article Copyright © 2024 Gregory Bart. All rights reserved.