Up: [[Artists and Art Movements]] Created: 2024-07-31 Updated: 2025-04-12 Agnes Pelton was a painter in the “modernist” art movement. She was born in 1881 and died in 1961. Pelton studied art at the Pratt Institute and then went on to study and paint in a variety of places in the world. She was strongly influenced by the Pratt instructor, Arthur Wesley Dow, who also taught Georgia O’Keeffe. Dow emphasized spirit, imagination, and unusual colour use, all of which show up in Pelton’s paintings. Agnes Pelton’s work went through three stages. In the first stage, she was painting imaginative works. In the second, she was living in the American Southwest and painting the people and landscapes of that area. And in the third stage, the one that is of most interest to me, Pelton was living in the Cathedral City desert in California. The skies there made her very aware of the spirit in nature and resulted in abstracted pieces that reflected Pelton’s spiritual beliefs. I particularly like these two images from that spiritual period: Being 1926 ![[Agnes Pelton, Being painting.webp|500]] Even Song 1934 ![[Agnes Pelton Even Song painting.webp|500]] Agnes Pelton was a co-founder and first president of the Transcendental Painting Group. Until seeing Agnes Pelton’s work, and [[Hilma af Klint]]’s, I hadn’t realized that I am captivated by spiritual art.