Art’s Spiritual and Healing Power
- Diamond Zhou
- May 30
- 15 min read
welcome to our
SATURDAY EVENING POST
May 31st, 2025
A soft radiance seems to spill from the painted surface, and the viewer stands as if on hallowed ground, enveloped in quiet. In that rapt moment of stillness, the boundaries between the self and something greater begin to blur. Light reveals form and colour as if unveiling a hidden realm. Silence settles not as an absence, but as a presence – a gentle hush that allows the subtler notes of the soul to resound. This is art as a sublime encounter: a sensory communion that stirs reverence and draws us back to our highest self. Art offers what philosopher Gaston Bachelard described as a return to the “heartland of being,” where we can hear the “gentle whisper” of our own souls. Far from being mere luxury or decoration, art functions as a spiritual catalyst, reminding us of our deepest and highest selves emotionally, metaphysically, and spiritually. It serves as both mirror and medicine for the soul, helping us “perceive within and behind [nature]... that which is timeless and entirely beautiful”, as artist Lawren Harris once wrote.
Artists have always looked to art as a pathway beyond the material world. Pioneers like Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint, inspired by Theosophy and other esoteric teachings, believed that art could convey spiritual realities invisible to the eye. Kandinsky famously likened colour and form to music that vibrates the soul: “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays... to cause vibrations in the soul.” For these artists, paintings were not just pictures, they were projections of the inner life, meant to uplift and transform the viewer. Kandinsky’s 1911 manifesto Concerning the Spiritual in Art argued that art’s highest purpose was to stir our higher nature and usher in an era of spiritualized consciousness through form and colour. Similarly, Hilma af Klint, Swedish artist, filled notebooks with guidance from spirit séances, convinced that her radically abstract works were messages “for the Temple,” revelations to be understood by future generations.
This view of art as a spiritual endeavour was shared by others around the world. In the 1920s, Canadian modernist Lawren Harris wrote that “art is the beginning of vision into the realm of eternal life.” A devout student of Theosophy, Harris saw his luminous North Shore landscapes and soaring mountain paintings as more than depictions of nature, they were meditations in paint, distilling a divine essence from the land. He believed that visible nature was but a “distorted reflection of a more perfect world,” and that the artist’s task was to reveal the timeless beauty behind outward forms. By the 1930s, Harris transitioned from representational landscapes to pure abstraction, feeling that simplified, radiant forms could better evoke spiritual truth. Indeed, he considered art a sacred calling and “not an amusement, nor a distraction,” but “a high training of the soul, essential to the soul’s growth.” In this conviction we hear an echo of integral yoga philosophy, the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, which deeply influenced Canadian abstract painter, Joseph Kyle. Aurobindo held that art, like yoga, can be a vehicle for consciousness: “The first and lowest use of Art is the purely aesthetic... the third and highest the spiritual,” he wrote. His spiritual partner, The Mother (Mirra Alfassa), likewise taught that “the discipline of Art has at its centre the same principle as the discipline of Yoga,” both aiming to “see and feel something that is beyond the ordinary... to go within and bring out from there deeper things.”
Such ideals found vivid expression in Joseph Kyle’s work. Kyle strove for what he called a “vision of the sublime” in painting. Steeped in Aurobindo’s philosophy, he approached art as a means of integrating the physical and the spiritual. His large canvases, composed of bold geometric forms in radiant colours, were attempts to harmonize the senses and the spirit. Kyle developed his own abstract approach called “Synoptics,” uniting disparate shapes through carefully orchestrated colour relationships, the results are striking, optical “symphonies” that hum with an inner music. Paul observes that “his work is a symphony for the eye, just like music.” In paintings such as Glenn Gould #6 (1986), Kyle paid homage to the famous pianist by transposing musical motifs into visual form – elongated yellow and green shapes rise and fall in rhythm, bookended by rich purple tones. The entire composition pulses with a sense of order and uplift, as if the canvas were an instrument tuning the viewer’s perception to a higher pitch.
Kyle’s Entelechy series even takes its title from a term in Aristotelian philosophy meaning the realization of potential – in his case, the spiritual potential of form and colour. Entelechy is the vital driving force, the force that changes our “potential” into result, it is the process in which an idea comes to fruition. Entelechy is the realization of this process. If a seed has the potential to grow into an enormous tree, then entelechy is the life force that drives this process. Entelechy is the vital force within an organism that allows for life, development, and self-fulfilment, is the force that changes us and moves us forward to achieve the highest form of ourselves. Aristotle used the term entelechy to refer to the soul. Life has an entelechy. These works call upon us, as viewers, to contemplate something beyond the surface, to experience art as aspiration, pointing toward an elevated state of mind.
“The aspiration in nearly all pure abstract painting is to invoke or make manifest that aspect of the experience which lies beyond normal perception. In other words — the spiritual. Although it is thoroughly grounded in personal experience, it tends always to the transcendental, the contemplative, the Sublime. It tends also to seek stylistic approaches which are universal rather than idiomatic. It is concerned not so much with the ideal as the ultimate real. It attempts to take the viewer from the outer eye to the inner eye from where the viewer then becomes a co-creator with the artist in the realization of the work. In fact, this kind of work requires serious and sustained involvement by the viewer which, if the work has been successful, can lead to a unique, profoundly rewarding and lasting experience.
“It is in a context akin to this that my work finds its reach.”
— Joseph Kyle
Notably, Joseph Kyle developed a friendship with Lawren Harris late in Harris’s life, forming a link between two generations of spiritually minded artists. Both men shared the conviction that art can connect the particular to the universal. Harris wrote that “a picture can become for us a highway between a particular thing and a universal feeling.” Indeed, the universal feeling, whether one calls it the sublime, the divine, or the true Self, is what these artists sought to capture. They remind us that the artist’s studio can be a place of pilgrimage and the act of creation a form of devotion. Through abstract shapes, luminous landscapes, and vibrant symphonies of colour, art can speak to what Sri Aurobindo describes “What Nature is, what God is, what man is can be triumphantly revealed in stone or on canvas” revealing truths that logic alone cannot grasp. In this way, art serves a role akin to scripture or prayer, but in the open language of visual experience. It taps into our highest emotional and metaphysical selves, those parts of us attuned to wonder, unity, and meaning.
If art can be a spiritual beacon, it is equally a practice of contemplation, a slowing of time, a deepening of presence. The experience of looking at art often mirrors meditation or prayer in its quiet focus. The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty described painting as a strange interplay between visible and invisible, where the viewer’s perception is altered and expanded. “Painting... gives visible existence to what profane vision believes to be invisible,” Merleau-Ponty wrote, opening “a texture of Being” in which “the eye lives... as a man lives in his house.” In other words, great art makes the unseen felt, whether that unseen is an emotion, a spiritual presence, or the soul of a landscape. We don’t just look at a powerful painting; we enter it, dwell in it, lose our sense of separateness for a moment. That immersive quality is profoundly contemplative and, in many cases, healing. The philosopher of imagination Gaston Bachelard celebrated this kind of daydream-like engagement, calling it a “productive reverie.” Through art-induced reverie, we step out of the cacophony of daily life and into a more poetic space of mind, one conducive to insight and inner peace. “Some day we will have to go back to the heartland of being and learn again to hear its gentle whisper,” Bachelard wrote, and art offers a way to do exactly that, by inviting us into silence, wonder, and introspection.
This contemplative aspect of art has long been appreciated in Eastern aesthetics, particularly within Daoism and Zen-influenced art forms. Daoist philosophy emphasizes harmony with the natural flow of the universe (the Dao) and values emptiness, stillness, and simplicity. We can see these principles alive in art that embraces minimalism and negative space. For example, Korean-Japanese artist Lee Ufan, a leader of the Mono-ha movement, creates paintings that are as much about what is not painted as what is. In his Dialogue series, Lee typically places a few single, deliberate brushstrokes onto a large white canvas, leaving vast areas untouched. The result is a balanced tension between form and emptiness. “A work of art is a site where places of making and not making, painting and not painting, are linked so that they reverberate with one another,” Lee explains. The unpainted silence on the canvas is as vital as the painted mark, each gives meaning to the other. When viewers stand before these works, they often describe a sensation of stillness and clarity. The sparse composition encourages a meditative focus on subtle details: the texture of the brushstroke, the grain of the canvas, the gentle aura of colour bleeding into blank space. It echoes the Daoist idea that empty space is what makes the vessel useful. In art, as in life, openness and pause allow for reflection. Lee Ufan’s paintings thus become exercises in mindfulness. They slow down our perception and attune us to presence, much like a Zen ink painting or a raked sand garden might do. The viewer completes the “dialogue” by bringing their own awareness, their breath, their gaze, their heartbeat into communion with the artwork.
Another artist whose work invites contemplative immersion is Zao Wou-Ki, a Chinese-French painter known for his vast, lyrical abstractions. Zao’s paintings are often inspired by elements of nature – wind, water, night sky – but they do not depict these literally. Instead, they convey the spirit of natural forces through swirling gestural forms and luminous colour atmospheres. Zao, who was influenced by both Eastern ink painting traditions and Western abstract expressionism, spoke of wanting to “find a centre for the radiation of light” in his canvases. Many of his works are titled simply with dates, as if to emphasize their existence as moments of pure experience rather than representations of something external. Standing before a Zao Wou-Ki canvas, one often has the sense of witnessing a cosmic event, perhaps the birth of a star, or the surge of a great wave, or the breathing of the earth. Critics have noted that Zao’s paintings “present for us the birth of light, the origins of water, and beyond these turbulent upheavals of matter, a distant sense of the life energy coming into being.” Indeed, his compositions frequently balance turbulence and tranquillity: a burst of white or yellow may erupt from a dark ground, like lightning breaking through storm clouds, while delicate ink-like lines dance and drift, suggesting both chaos and order. This relationship can evoke a powerful emotional response: awe, serenity, longing, akin to what one feels in the presence of the sublime in nature.
Art that emphasises contemplative experience can have a gentle therapeutic effect on the viewer. The tranquillity of a minimalist sculpture or the grandeur of a sublime painting draws us out of ourselves and into a calmer, more connected state. This is not a new idea: think of how people have long sought out the hush of chapels or the solace of gardens to soothe the spirit. Today, art provides a secular analogue: the museum or gallery is a hushed space of reflection, and a painting can serve as an object of concentrated attention much like a candle flame or a mandala. Phenomenological aesthetics (through thinkers like Merleau-Ponty and Bachelard) has helped articulate why this happens: because encountering art is an embodied, lived experience that can reorganize our awareness. We feel our way through a painting or sculpture, engaging senses, memory, and imagination in unison. In that immersive moment, the usual chatter of the mind may fall silent. Many have described experiencing a kind of flow state or quiet ecstasy in front of artworks – a feeling of being both intensely present and connected to something larger. Such moments of aesthetic arrest can be deeply healing, offering respite from anxiety and a reconnection to one’s own centre. As Harris observed, “every work of art which really moves us is in some degree a revelation: it changes us.” Even if the change is subtle, a slightly lighter mood, a new insight, a release of tension, the artwork has acted as a healing presence, aligning our inner state toward wholeness.
Art elevates and calms the human spirit in galleries, but it can also promote healing in more immediate, clinical settings. Over the past few decades, hospitals and care centres around the world have begun to integrate art collections and creative programs into their environments, recognizing that art can measurably improve patient outcomes. Scientific research has documented that art in healthcare settings enhances patient healing, as it can reduce stress, alleviate pain perception, and even shorten hospital stays. Dr. Jennifer Finkel of the Cleveland Clinic’s Arts & Medicine Institute states that: “Fine art is good medicine. It comforts, elevates the spirit, and affirms life and hope.” Placing artwork in a hospital is not about mere decoration, it acts as a therapeutic modality. Studies have found, for example, that patients with views of nature or art on the wall report less anxiety and require less pain medication than those in bare rooms. A beautiful or intriguing artwork provides a focal point other than one’s illness, it offers a mental escape and a source of positive stimulation, which can bolster emotional resilience during treatment.
Around the world, leading hospitals have built significant art collections to leverage these benefits. The Cleveland Clinic in the United States, for instance, has accumulated more than 7,000 artworks across its facilities, effectively offering a “museum experience within a healthcare setting”. The collection is curated with the specific goal of promoting healing and engaging the mind: “Artwork is selected to promote healing and activate spaces, providing moments of curiosity, rest and contemplation for patients, visitors and caregivers.” It is meant to humanize the hospital environment and reduce the sterile, stressful atmosphere traditionally associated with medical facilities. Similarly, Mayo Clinic has long championed the arts in medicine, featuring a vast array of paintings, sculptures, and performances on its campuses, and even publishing a book titled The Art of Healing to celebrate how art and design contribute to patient care. Major research hospitals like UCSF in San Francisco and Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles have robust arts programs; at Cedars-Sinai, one famed anecdote recalls how philanthropist Marcia Simon Weisman brought works from her and her husband’s art collection into his hospital room during his recovery – a Jackson Pollock painting on the wall reportedly helped spark his return to consciousness, shows just how deeply our minds can connect with art.
Here in Vancouver, a shining example of this healing art philosophy is the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation Art Collection. Over the past 25 years, this donor-funded collection has grown to include more than 2,800 works of art installed throughout Vancouver General Hospital, UBC Hospital, and related care centres. From contemporary postmodern abstractions to coastal landscapes, the range of art was deliberately chosen to create a “calming and therapeutic environment” for patients, staff, and visitors alike. The hospital hallways and waiting rooms have essentially become galleries, turning what can be intimidating, stressful spaces into areas of relative normalcy and even inspiration. Roberta Beiser, who co-founded the program in 1998, was motivated by a simple, compassionate insight: that art could help people get well. And evidence supports her vision, that hospital art programs like this have noted improvements in patient mood and staff morale. The presence of art provides moments of contemplation and connection in the medical routine. “Art has been shown to reduce patient recovery times, enhancing both mental and physical healing,” notes the VGH & UBC Foundation, which actively fundraises to maintain and grow the collection. In rehabilitation and long-term care spaces, uplifting and culturally diverse artworks have been introduced to stimulate patients’ senses and help them recover cognitive and motor function. Every piece is evaluated for its suitability to the hospital context, generally favouring works that are vibrant but not agitating, complex but not confusing, capable of sustaining repeated viewing.
One can find works by prominent Canadian artists in the VGH & UBC collection: Andy Warhol prints bring pops of colour, while works by artists like Emily Carr or North West Coast Indigenous carvings connect patients with the natural and cultural heritage of British Columbia. Each artwork becomes a small beacon of normal life and beauty amid the medical equipment and clinical white walls. As a result, the hospital feels more humane. Staff report that art on the walls “starts conversations and creates deeper connections” between caregivers and patients, reminds everyone that the people in this building are not just medical cases, but whole persons with imaginations, memories, and hopes. This aligns with a holistic view of healing – treating the person, not just the disease. Vancouver’s program is far from unique; it stands alongside many others worldwide. The National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, for example, supports hospital arts charities that commission sculptures, murals, and performances in hospitals across Britain. In the United States, institutions from large urban hospitals to small hospices have embraced art: the Society for the Arts in Healthcare (now part of the National Organization for Arts in Health) was established to share best practices in using the arts for patient care. What all these efforts recognize is that healing is not only a physical process but an emotional and spiritual journey. And art, whether by lifting our spirits, giving us comfort, or provoking our curiosity, can be a powerful complement to medicine’s work on the body.
Ultimately, the power of art in modern life lies in its ability to hold our highest aspirations. Art has a unique way of speaking to the soul without dogma or doctrine, it can move us to tears, ease our sorrows, or ignite our dreams in a manner that feels both personal and universal. Artists that understand art as a vehicle of the spirit do not approach art as mere craft or commodity; for them, creating and sharing art was akin to a sacred act, one that could awaken something profound in artist and audience alike. Their works invite us to contemplate the sublime, whether that sublime is found in the majesty of nature, the depths of consciousness, or the simple revelation of colour and form. In doing so, art gently reacquaints us with dimensions of ourselves that everyday life can obscure: our capacity for wonder, our longing for transcendence, our innate creativity, our empathy and humanity.
Sri Aurobindo once wrote, “Art for Art’s sake certainly... but also Art for the soul’s sake, the spirit’s sake,” reaching for “all that the soul, the spirit wants to seize through the medium of beauty.” Art helps us seize what is beautiful and true in life and hold it close, if only for a moment. It is striking how often people describe feeling “inspired” or “elevated” after an encounter with art—words that speak to breath and uplift, to being carried somewhere beyond the ordinary.
Art, at its best, does breathe new life into us. It reminds us, as Lawren Harris wrote, that “every work of art which really moves us is in some degree a revelation: it changes us.” We emerge from such an encounter a little altered, perhaps more cantered, more open, or simply more awake to the world’s depth and possibility. And when art becomes part of our healing journeys, those small shifts accumulate. They can ground us in difficult times, accompany us through grief, and remind us we are not alone.
We might recall Bachelard’s striking insight: “Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.” In other words, art is not a mere accessory to human life, but fundamental to it – a source of light and grounding as vital as our planet and star. Art reminds us of our shared humanity, our highest values, and the inner light that each of us carries. It creates moments of wholeness where the mind, heart, and spirit converge. In those moments, whether we describe them as spiritual or simply profoundly human, we glimpse what it means to be fully alive.
CURRENT EXHIBITION
Lat week to view
Barbara Astman: Concealed/Revealed
Exhibition on through Saturday, June 7th.
Above images: Installation view of Barbara Astman: Concealed/Revealed. Photography by Kyle Juron
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Tony Robins: Flowers of Resistance
Opening Saturday, June 21st, 2025
