ARTIST INSPIRATION: Emil Bisttram It’s been too long since I shared the work of an artist that inspires me. Waking up in New Mexico it feels timely to share the work of Emil Bisttram who was an important artist in the Taos art scene circa the 1930’s In 1938, Bisttram established the Transcendental Painting Group with several other New Mexico artists. The unifying goal of the group was to make art based on spiritual principles: ...art which releases from its creators the deepest springs of vitality and consciousness and which aims to stimulate in others, through deep and spontaneous emotional experiences of form and color, a more intense participation in the life of the spirit. Bisttram’s essential belief was that harmony was proportional, and that making harmonious, proportional divisions on a sheet of paper was a productive, life-giving, redemptive enterprise that combated negativity and disharmony. The manner that Bisttram used to proportionally divide his compositions was dynamic symmetry, a method of picture composition based on Euclidean geometry. Bisttram used dynamic symmetry for the structure of his representational, abstract (cubist and futurist), and transcendental (non-objective) compositions. For Bisttram, dynamic symmetry functioned as a compass that guided him through the many stylistic experiments he undertook, and provides the essential coherency for his work as a whole. “There is something in this high, rare air that splits white light into its seven prismatic hues. It is never clear, white light. It is lavender, or lilac, or primrose, or gold, or as red as blood, according to the hours and their mood; and if you want to carry the metaphor still farther, you may truthfully add that the hours on these high uplands are dancing hours.” Agnes Laut describing the light in the high desert of New Mexico.