# Spirit art

Source: https://spiritfold.com/Spirit_art  
Published by the Australian Spiritual Alliance on Spiritfold, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

**Spirit art** is drawing or painting that the artist believes is guided or inspired by spirits. In nineteenth-century Spiritualism, mediums produced paintings, as well as songs, poetry and other works, said to be inspired by spirits.[1] The art historian Dawn Adès writes that many of these "medium, or spirit, artists" were women, and that they remain among the least studied of the artists grouped under "outsider art".[2]

## Description

### How spirit artists describe their work

Spirit artists attribute their work to the spirits they believe guide them. A well-documented example is the English medium Georgiana Houghton (died 1884), who believed spirits ranging from saints and archangels to the Renaissance painters Correggio and Titian worked through her, and who gave up claims to personal authorship of her pictures.[3] Even so, Adès notes, Houghton also had firm faith in herself as an artist, and had some art training.[2] Some early Spiritualists also saw moral value in such work: the English Spiritualist William Wilkinson, whose wife drew and painted automatically, wrote in 1858 that the drawings had been to them "an incentive to a better and holier life".[4]

### Methods

Houghton began in 1861, after seeing spirit drawings made by another medium. At first she drew with coloured pencils attached to a planchette, a small wheeled board that holds a pencil; later, on the advice of her spirit guides, she drew freehand and then moved on to watercolour, gouache and ink.[5] Her early pictures resembled botanical drawings; within months she was making works that, to a modern eye, look abstract.[2] She treated every mark and colour as meaningful: she wrote explanations on the backs of many works, and gave colours set meanings, such as yellow, blue and red for God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.[2][3]

Spirit art is still made. A Canberra medium told the anthropologist Matt Tomlinson that she had pictures on her walls of figures that looked like guides, painted for her by an inspired "psychic artist", though she said she couldn't prove whether they showed her guides.[6]

### Spirit art in a demonstration

In public demonstrations, spirit art can be paired with spoken mediumship. The British psychic artist Coral Polge sketched people who had died and wished to communicate with members of her audience, often working alongside a clairvoyant, such as Doris Collins, who passed on messages while she drew the communicator.[4] The Arthur Findlay College, the Spiritualists' National Union's college in England, describes spirit art as taking many forms, from spirit portraits to intuitive art made of colour, pattern, symbol and word.[7]

## Scope

### What it includes

- Drawings and paintings that the artist believes are guided or inspired by spirits[1][2]
- Pictures of spirit guides made for others by a "psychic artist"[6]

### What it is not

- It is not the same as the automatic drawing of the Surrealists. André Breton championed spirit artists' drawings, but for the Surrealists such "dictations" came from within the artist's own mind, not from spirits.[2]

## Traditions and lineage

Houghton held an exhibition of 155 of her drawings at the New British Gallery in Old Bond Street, London, in 1871. It drew puzzled reviews, very few works sold, and she was almost bankrupted.[2][5] She was largely forgotten after her death.[2] A 2016 exhibition at The Courtauld in London presented her as an important and largely overlooked forerunner of modernist abstraction,[8] and Adès argues that she pioneered abstract art almost 50 years before Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian.[2]

## Context

### Within Spiritualism

Spirit art is a recognised but specialised form of Spiritualist mediumship. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States lists automatic and independent paintings among the phenomena of Spiritualism[9] and "precipitated art" under [physical mediumship](https://spiritfold.com/Physical_mediumship).[10] The Spiritualists' National Union in Britain offers certificate and diploma awards in spirit art; at diploma level each drawing must clearly show a person the recipient can recognise, backed by evidence identifying them, and candidates give drawings and spoken evidence to two recipients within 30 minutes. Students reach these awards gradually: the certificate requires earlier courses in Spiritualist teaching and in speaking and demonstrating, followed by logged training sessions that an approved trainer must sign off, and the final assessment includes an interview, a demonstration and a prayer suitable for a service.[11] The scholar Massimo Introvigne distinguishes at least three kinds of work that Spiritualists count as spirit art: "precipitated" pictures said to appear without a human hand, portraits of spirits sketched by mediums, and works by artists whose hands spirits are said to guide. Art merely inspired by Spiritualist ideas is not generally counted.[12]

### In Australian Spiritualism

Besides the Houghton drawings held in Melbourne (see below), a 1979 *Canberra Times* report on local Spiritualists described a local "psychic painter" whose work was said to be "guided by the spirits".[13] The Spiritual Mission of Noarlunga in South Australia includes evenings of drawing spirit, with mediumship, in its Friday development programme.[14]

### A Spiritualist perspective

Spirit art is one of the quieter gifts in Spiritualism, a reminder that communication with spirit can take creative as well as spoken forms. A Spiritualist would see a spirit artist as a medium first and an artist second. Where a portrait is offered as evidence, it should be judged as any evidence is: by whether the recipient can recognise the person shown, supported by other detail that identifies them. For that reason a student is wise to become a sound medium first, able to give clear spoken evidence, and to add the drawing only once the link with spirit is reliable.

That calls for honesty. A pleasing picture of a guide may mean a great deal to the person who receives it, but, as the Canberra medium quoted above put it, it cannot be proved to show that guide, and a good spirit artist says so plainly. Inspired art that makes no such claim has its own worth. Spirit artists should be clear about any fee, avoid presenting a picture as more than they can stand behind, and remember that a portrait of a loved one who has died can stir strong feelings. Offered with care and modesty, spirit art can bring real comfort.

## Spirit art in Australia

Most of Houghton's surviving watercolours are held by the Victorian Spiritualists' Union in Melbourne.[5][8] Adès records that 35 of her drawings were sent to Australia at an unknown date, where they may have been exhibited.[2] The Union's collection was the main source for the 2016 exhibition *Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings* at The Courtauld, which its organisers described as the first showing of these works since 1871. Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne showed some of them shortly before they travelled to London.[8][3]

## Safety and good practice

- Spirit artists who work as mediums are covered by the same codes of conduct as other mediums. The NSAC Code of Ethics asks its mediums to discuss fees at the outset, represent facts truthfully, make only realistic statements about what mediumship can do, and avoid claiming unusual or one-of-a-kind abilities or making statements likely to play on people's fears or emotions.[15]
- Where a drawing is offered as evidence, the standard set by the Spiritualists' National Union is that it should show a person the recipient can recognise, supported by other evidence that identifies them.[11]

## Related modalities

- [Mediumship](https://spiritfold.com/Mediumship)
- [Art therapy](https://spiritfold.com/Art_therapy)
- [Spiritualism](https://spiritfold.com/Spiritualism)
- [Channelling](https://spiritfold.com/Channelling)

## References

1. Buescher, John B. ["Spiritualism"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/spiritualism). *Encyclopedia of Religion*, 2005. Reproduced on Encyclopedia.com (accessed 11 October 2026).
2. Adès, Dawn. ["The Medium and the Message"](https://frieze.com/article/medium-and-message). *Frieze*, 15 September 2016 (accessed 11 October 2026).
3. Freeman-Attwood, Jessica. ["The Divine Messages of a Victorian Spiritualist's Drawings"](https://hyperallergic.com/the-divine-messages-of-a-victorian-spiritualists-drawings/). *Hyperallergic*, 8 September 2016 (accessed 11 October 2026).
4. ["Automatic Drawing and Painting"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/automatic-drawing-and-painting). *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology*, 5th ed. (Gale, 2001), via Encyclopedia.com (accessed 12 October 2026).
5. Higgie, Jennifer. ["'The Substantiality of Spirit': Georgiana Houghton's Pictures from the Other Side"](https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-substantiality-of-spirit/). *The Public Domain Review*, 22 February 2024 (accessed 11 October 2026).
6. Tomlinson, Matt. *[Speaking with the Dead: An Ethnography of Extrahuman Experience](https://doi.org/10.53288/0465.1.00)*. Earth: punctum books, 2024. Open access under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (accessed 11 October 2026).
7. Arthur Findlay College. ["Our Courses"](https://www.arthurfindlaycollege.org/our-courses/) (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
8. Research Excellence Framework 2021. ["Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings – exhibition and accompanying catalogue"](https://results2021.ref.ac.uk/outputs/f6b8b6ed-9381-46b6-8e94-07d8d365316a?page=1) (output record for the exhibition at The Courtauld, London, 16 June – 11 September 2016, and its catalogue; accessed 11 October 2026).
9. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. ["Spiritualism Explained"](https://nsac.org/spiritualism-explained/). NSAC, © 2026 (accessed 12 October 2026).
10. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. ["Mediumship"](https://nsac.org/mediumship/). NSAC, © 2026 (accessed 12 October 2026).
11. Spiritualists' National Union. ["History, Teachings and Practices of Spiritualism"](https://snu.org.uk/learning-resources/history-teachings-and-practices-of-spiritualism/) (course and award listings; no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
12. Introvigne, Massimo. ["Spiritualism and the Visual Arts"](https://wrldrels.org/2017/08/02/spiritualism-and-the-visual-arts/). World Religions and Spirituality Project, 2 August 2017 (accessed 12 October 2026).
13. Benet, Theo. "Time for psychics 'to speak openly'". *The Canberra Times*, 22 July 1979, p. 6. [Trove](https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article110569309), National Library of Australia (accessed 12 October 2026).
14. Spiritual Mission of Noarlunga. ["Spiritual Development"](https://spiritualmissionofnoarlunga.org.au/spiritual-development/) (Friday programme; no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
15. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. [*NSAC Code of Ethics*](https://nsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/NSAC_Code_of_Ethics_18.pdf). Approved April 2018, adopted October 2018 (accessed 12 October 2026).

## Further reading

- Adès, Dawn. ["The Medium and the Message"](https://frieze.com/article/medium-and-message). *Frieze*, 2016.
- Higgie, Jennifer. ["'The Substantiality of Spirit': Georgiana Houghton's Pictures from the Other Side"](https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-substantiality-of-spirit/). *The Public Domain Review*, 2024.