John Edmiston's Trance Paintings Emerge as Spiritual Art Draws Global Attention
Sep 21, 2026
New trance paintings by self-taught visionary artist John Edmiston arrive as global interest grows in spiritual, visionary and mediumistic art.
London, United Kingdom, September 21, 2026 -- A new group of oil paintings by John Edmiston, a self-taught visionary artist who paints in a deep-trance altered state, has come out of late night sessions at his London studio. They arrive at a moment when museums and galleries worldwide are giving spiritual art the sustained attention that most curators and critics withheld from it for decades.
The paintings continue a practice Edmiston has refined over years of working in altered states. Each one is begun with a clearing, an invocation and an invitation, after which meditation and a form of self-hypnosis carry him into trance. The states last just two to three hours at most, which sets the terms of everything that follows: the paintings need to be made quickly and they are therefore small. Oil on paper, on coir, on slate, in formats that often measure a few centimetres across. Bigger paintings are a challenge as it is difficult to sustain the trance state for longer periods of time. Viewers who encounter the finished pictures are frequently surprised to learn how fast they were painted.
The new paintings follow a profile of Edmiston published by FineArtsNews in September 2026, which examined his working method and the material that emerges from it.
Two to Three Hours, and No Preconception
Edmiston begins without any idea of what will appear. Paint goes down without conscious thought, and the unconscious takes over. At some point the colours and values start to suggest a form or a face, and from there he follows what is arriving.
"It is not really my creative process. My main achievement is to get out of the way so that the creative energy can happen," he says.
When it does happen, he describes the sense of connection as very powerful, a feeling of being plugged in. As the shape gathers on the surface it becomes a presence, and within that presence he can sometimes take in associations, apparently random insights or correlations, messages, fragments of stories. Every picture is a different experience and a different energy.
The sessions take place late at night and run into the early hours. It is the time he has found most workable, for practical reasons as much as anything else.
"It is the quietest time, when it is still and more conducive to what transpires," he says.
Edmiston calls the results spirit pictures, or pictures from other realms, and treats each finished work as a footprint of the encounter: a surviving fragment, a physical trace of the inner vision, all that remains of the experience. The composition was never his to decide.
A Field That Spent Decades Outside the Room
Edmiston's new work lands in the middle of a sharp global rise in interest in spiritual and mediumistic art, a body of work that most curators and critics long declined to take seriously. Major exhibitions devoted to Ithell Colquhoun, Hilma af Klint, Georgiana Houghton and Madge Gill have changed that position, drawing large audiences and forcing a reassessment of artists whose work was made in visionary, automatic or mediumistic states.
Vivienne Roberts, now an independent curator and for many years the Curator at the College of Psychic Studies in London, has written of the work: "John Edmiston's practice offers a rare insight into an authentic exploration of altered states of consciousness through painting. His commitment to this intensely personal creative process results in work that is both compelling and unlike anything else in the contemporary art landscape. In his otherworldly creations, Edmiston demonstrates how art can become a vehicle for exploring the mysteries of consciousness and our relationship with the unseen."
That shift has opened space for living artists working in the same lineage. Edmiston's practice belongs to it directly: automatic initiation of the image, trance as a working condition, and a finished object understood as the residue of an encounter.
Where the Work Is Held
Edmiston's paintings have entered two specialist collections. Works are held in the Collection of Mediumistic Art in Munich, which gathers art produced through mediumistic and automatic practice, and in the Permanent Collection of the College of Psychic Studies in London, an institution devoted to the study of this field. He is represented by the Henry Boxer Gallery in London, a pioneering dealer known for self-taught, outsider and visionary artists.
Gill Matini, the Principal at The College of Psychic Studies writes, 'John Edmiston's work has an immediate effect on the viewer. The faces that emerge feel somehow familiar, yet you can never quite place them — poised on the threshold of two worlds, within touching distance and yet fleeting.'
Elmar R. Gruber, of the Collection of Mediumistic Art, has written of the work: "Edmiston manages to capture fleeting spiritual experiences in an enchanting, chromatically reduced style."
What the Pictures Carry
The theme Edmiston returns to most often is life beyond the death of the physical body, and he is direct about what he hopes a viewer takes from the work.
"We are not our physical bodies; our souls are eternal," he says.
He argues that a full understanding of the continuance of consciousness beyond physical death would produce an enormous shift in both personal and collective evolution. People who knew their lives were everlasting might carry less fear, he suggests, and might ask more often whether they are following the best direction or wasting their time. His hope is that such a shift would make people more helpful and more compassionate towards one another. Meditation, kindness and compassion are what he names as the sources of his own process.
Edmiston declines to characterise his own style, preferring that viewers look at the pictures and describe what they find. He is equally firm about the place of his personal history, which he considers unimportant next to the work. The paintings are the subject.
What Comes Next
Edmiston continues to paint on the same terms, session by session, through the quiet hours, with no stated plan beyond a long and creative life. He has no interest in being a career artist and paints because he needs to, is compelled to do so. The pictures accumulate at the rate the trance states allow, which is to say at an astonishing pace, usually at least one every evening and he has boxes and boxes of them, sometimes rediscovering pictures he had long forgotten.
His closing thought for readers is simple enough to state plainly: if we could focus on our highest intention and be mindful of each thought and action, we would all live a happier life, and our own happiness is found in helping others.
For inquiries, collaborations, and additional information, contact John Edmiston via email at [email protected], visit the official website, contact Henry Boxer Gallery or follow him on Facebook.
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Name: John Edmiston
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