Agnes Lawrence Pelton

depicting an inner world

Agnes Lawrence Pelton's (1881-1961) interest in the spiritual came primarily from her mother, a woman who became a recluse after being excommunicated from her church as a result of her beliefs. When her mother died, Pelton moved from Brooklyn, New York to an abandoned windmill on Long Island, a move which solidified her withdrawing from the outside world to focus on her own inner life. Like Hilma af Klint, Pelton was also interested in Theosophy, albeit a different sect of the philosophy called Agni Yoga (Agni meaning fire), which was based around the idea of fire as a symbol of life force and of the spiritual journey towards a new kind of divinity. Her engagement with these spiritual schools of thought led her to move to the desert of Southern California in the 1930s where she became utterly enamored with the desert, a fact which is reflected in her work. Inspiration, however, was at times hard to come by and Pelton would often only paint her abstractions one day a week, taking the rest of her time to paint more commercial pieces which she sold to tourists.