Attempts to Communicate the Transcendent in Contemporary Art: An Artist’s Point of View

Abstract

The article investigates attempts in contemporary art to convey transcendent realities through the lens of the artist. This study examines three key moments of the artistic creative process: intuition, asceticism, and silence. The article assesses silence or stillness as a specific mental state that enables us to evaluate reality with a heightened awareness of our own length, fragility, and the infinite that awaits us on the other side of existence. In artistic practice, silence is a prerequisite for authenticity, believability, and creativity. The article explores the possibility of uncovering and revealing the transcendent via matter through the author’s own artistic inquiry. It discusses art as a master of transforming material, psychological, and physical facts into shapes that hint at what is beyond what the eye or ear can perceive. Art can lead to the sublime and open the mind, eyes, and heart to that which is beyond. The expression of the transcendent through artistic action is observed by analyzing the relationship between the artist and intuitive knowledge in the artistic practices of contemporary and modern artists. Along with the qualitative method of narrative research, research methodologies specific to the artistic field (visual arts) were predominately used, expanding the boundaries of qualitative research by taking a holistic approach closer to the very nature of the artistic process and allowing for a more complete understanding of the process itself.

1. Introduction

This article is based on the author’s observation of her creative process, in which the author, as an artist, closely observes artistic creation. It seeks to illuminate the artistic process, a phenomenon that is familiar to artists but challenging to comprehend through rational means. Through the author’s own artistic inquiry, this article examines the potential for art practice in the field of visual arts to convey the transcendent. It examines the artistic process and its relationship to transcendental reality (God), focusing on three key concepts: intuition, asceticism, and silence. These concepts are found in both art and religion. In his Letter to Artists, Pope John Paul II gives his insight into art and religious experience, asserting that art has a close affinity with the world of faith. In the chapter Towards a renewed dialogue the Pope notes: “Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience. In so far as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption” (John Paul II 1999).

This appeal to the mystery can be found in the artistic creative process, which is viewed as a spiritual activity through the materialization of intuitive concepts. These concepts are disclosed in the artworks of Croatian artists Ante Kuduz and Julije Knifer. They are also investigated in the creative processes of American Abstract Expressionists Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman, both members of the New York School. They are primarily explored and revealed through my own artistic practice. Asceticism as a way of life is seen as a requirement for artistic creation that alludes to transcendence. Silence is regarded as a prerequisite for authenticity and originality in the artistic process that aims to express transcendence.

During the creative process, the decision-making of artists is closely examined. This article describes the possibilities for inventive uses of artistic tools and materials. The ink drawings and digital drawings that I created throughout this research are represented in Figures 3–8.

2. View Conditionality

Researchers, scientists, and artists recognize the impossibility of absolute access to reality as they progress through areas of scientific or artistic interest because human ways of access are always nondeterministic, limited by conditions and the time–space continuum (Paar and Golub 2003). Partially present in medieval art and highlighted by the unattainable nature of the Cubist representational effort around the polyperspectivity of the all-seeing eye and cited and analyzed in numerous works of art of the twentieth century, this inability to comprehend reality in its fullness, manifests human weakness and limitation evident in every aspect of human existence. Man is constrained by his body, personality, space, time, and the defaults of life. By experiencing daily effort, misery, and uncertainty, man begins to comprehend the reality in the amount that he is given. In his book Introduction to Christianity, Joseph Ratzinger ponders the possibilities of human knowledge through the dialogue between science and faith, concluding with: “Only by circling around, by looking and describing from different, apparently contrary angles can we succeed in alluding to the truth, which is never visible to us in its totality” (Ratzinger 2017, p. 168). There is no such thing as total objectivity in human perception. As there is no such thing as an innocent eye, there is no such thing as pure science or art. Regardless of the scientific or artistic discipline with which he deals, a researcher, philosopher, scientist, or artist always carries himself and creates and observes reality through himself, drawing conclusions based on the questions he has asked. As a result, artistic research via artistic practice offers a form of observation and immersion that is no more subjective or less objective than any other discipline. Different approaches, different questions, different insights, different experiments, departures from different starting points—these enable the enrichment of the cognitive world, but they require an appreciation of different ways of knowing as a prerequisite.

In his essay Ways of Seeing, John Berger (2021, pp. 10–11) interprets the ways in which we see things and phenomena around us, arguing that our way of seeing is always influenced by what we know and always by what we believe because we only see what we see, and seeing is an act of choice. As a result, we look within our reach, within what we are positioned towards, always as an interrelationship between things and us, between the world and us. Our gaze, which is constantly in motion, as well as its conditioning by our conscious and unconscious choices, shapes our world, our reality, in which we both see and are seen on a more fundamental level of communication than the one we achieve through dialogue with words.

The presence of this kind of interaction can be identified within the artistic oeuvre of Barnett Newman, an American painter and theorist. With his paintings, Newman (1905–1977) communicates the tone of the spirit and various spiritual states. He conveys a type of religious experience, a specific type of spiritualized feeling, through the medium of painting. Stepping into his large-scale paintings involves experiencing them with the entire body, with the senses—staying with the body in the space of the painting. The images are not about the author’s emotions or a narrative that he wishes to portray but rather about universal human values and goals. The observer enters the space of Newman’s paintings physically and intellectually, bringing his mind and soul into a reality that transcends everyday life. Harold Rosenberg denies the religious connotation of Newman’s series of fourteen black-and-white paintings titled The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachtani. In accordance with Berger’s interpretation of the conditioning of our view, Rosenberg discusses the necessity of interpreting Newman’s The Way of the Cross in light of his secular worldview (Rosenberg 1978, p. 81). Newman initiates the creation of this cycle without knowing how it will ultimately develop. A few years later, he realized that he was constructing the Via Crucis. Such incremental realizations are not exceptional but rather a common byproduct of creative activity. Numerous artists’ works demonstrate the gradual revelation of their own creative process and its significance. Humility prior to the realization of the work by recognizing the participatory role of the artist who builds the work as a collaborator, gradually and persistently progressing in the game of discovering the layers and contents that are offered to him and sometimes imposed, is a necessary condition for genuine artistic creativity. Newman’s work exemplifies an exploration into the potential of revealing the transcendent through the author’s artistic inquiry, particularly by means of matter. This discourse explores the role of art in the process of transforming tangible, psychological, and corporeal realities into forms that allude to realms beyond the limitations of human perception.

In order to further elaborate on the objective of this study, which is research into attempts in contemporary art to convey transcendent realities through the lens of the artist, an investigation will be done employing the concepts of intuition, asceticism, and silence. The investigation will primarily concentrate on the process of artistic creation, specifically within the act itself.

2.1. Artist and Intuition

The intertwining of physical and spiritual aspects and the materialization of intuitive ideas are the primary distinguishing features of art in comparison to philosophical or scientific activity. Artistic creativity is a type of spiritual activity (Kupareo 1993, p. 7). The artist is invited to cultivate a special gift of creativity by experimenting with the transformation of matter. As opposed to destruction as a human-exclusive action. In opposition to “nothing”. In the middle of the 20th century, Jacques Maritain discussed creative intuition, or more precisely, creative emotion (Trapani 2011, p. 111). By art, he means the creative, productive, and inventive activity of the human spirit, but he makes a further distinction when referring to poetry, which he defines as “the intercommunication of the inner being of things and the inner human Self, which is a kind of divination (Maritain 1977, p. 3).” This exact remark by Maritain was confirmed by research conducted during the drawing activities that informed the development of this work. In his essays on aesthetics, Man and Art, Raimond Kupareo (1993, pp. 79–80) observes well how in Maritain’s works, he often struggles with attempts to verbalize thoughts about intuition and creativity: “I search by tapping for a suitable word”, “I speak with apprehension and fear”, which, in addition to philosophical reflection, Maritain discovers his own experience of struggle with the transmission and “materialization” of the intuited. According to Maritain, poetic intuition arises from the subconscious and unconscious depths. Kupareo asserts that creative intuition is the origin of all art. Rudolf Arnheim, on the other hand, defines intuition as the retrieval of cognitive data through the perceptual field (Arnheim 2008, pp. 27–40). Excluded is Maritain’s interpretation of intuition as poetic insight. It rules out the possibility of divine inspiration and the supernatural. Intuition is viewed as a cognitive procedure that is continuously and systematically interwoven with intellectual analysis. Arnheim’s thesis is partially supported by an introspective examination of the drawing process in this research. It considers Arnheim’s prediction of the perception of the sensory field to be too limited, expanding it from the space of collaboration of intuition and cognition of the subjects themselves to broader horizons of the sensory field in which dialogic intervention of the subject with transcendent realities or of transcendent realities with the subject is possible. To accept or approach such a possibility, experiential knowledge is required. This interpretation is founded on the experience of consciously observing the creative process while in it. In this research, I am engaged as an artist who is going through a creative process and an observer of that same process. This particular position aligns with Ratzinger’s assertion that man cannot ask and exist as a mere observer because he who tries to be a mere observer experiences nothing (Ratzinger 2017, p. 170). If the human being is viewed positivistically, exclusively through horizontal relations, then the influence of vertical relationships on the human system of understanding and reality itself cannot be accepted. However, if the human being is viewed as a being that is part of the created world and, as such, is in a relationship with the Creator, then the paradigm shifts and understanding expands from the horizontal dimension into the space of perspectives that are difficult to comprehend and unpredictable, which are a mystery to the limited human mind but present and perceptible to the artist, the mystic, and the intuitive scientist. The experience of numerous artists and scientists, whether Renaissance, Baroque, or contemporary, lends credence to what has been asserted.

2.2. Artistic Asceticism

In artistic creation, asceticism specifically refers to adherence to the creative process itself, which is understood as a yearning for a reduction of artistic expression to its essentials. It is frequently observable in artistic practice in the form of expressions that do not adhere to a narrative. This approach aims to capture the essence of artistic expression by eliminating non-essential elements, deviating from narrative structures, and simplifying intricate visual representation systems into a concise visual language. By employing this mode of artistic expression, artists can go beyond mere visual language and access the realm of transcendental reality. The process eludes complete rationalization and explication through reason, yet it manifests tangibly within the realm of artistic creation. The artist is able to perceive this transcendental reality only after engaging in this particular process. The French philosopher Michel Foucault elaborates on this particular type of experience. The author acknowledges that he regards writing as a process through which he can uncover previously unnoticed insights or perspectives that were beyond his initial perception. The author initiates the writing process with a lack of knowledge regarding its ultimate direction or the conclusions that will be reached. However, through the act of writing, the author uncovers both the trajectory of the work and the substantiating evidence (Foucault 2015, p. 50). This article examines the gradual revelation within the artistic process, focusing on the concepts of intuition, asceticism, and silence. Under this perspective, similar experiences of poets, painters, draughtsmen, and artists can be observed and cataloged.

Ante Kuduz (Vrlika, 14 June 1935–Zagreb, 24 January 2011), a notable Croatian graphic designer, printmaker, and painter of the 20th century, distinguished himself throughout his whole creative output with his highly structured drawing gestures. His hand thinks, observes, and expresses what he has seen, whether it be the hills of Zagorje or the landscape of Dalmatian Zagora, the region where he spent his early youth. Kuduz’s eye’s sensitivity to perceived reality captures the most subtle sequences and contrasts them with huge, dark, strong forms. A return to mental synthesis follows the transition from analytic to expressiveness. His creativity has grown through a number of cycles: Beginnings (1961–1955), Frame (1965–1972), Space (1972–1975), City (1976–1981), Landscape (1981–1991), and Graf (1992–2011). From the initial works to the latest graphs, the artwork is based on drawing. The majority of his work consists of monochromatic rhythms, with the exception of a section of the Space cycle from the 1970s in which serigraphs provide color to the artist’s structures. Kuduz’s internal and external environments are characterized by a sophisticated visual language, refined perceptuality, and the combination of a lace-like raster and thunderous calligraphic strokes.

The economy of pure forms, through the author’s refined sensitivity, highlights the dialogical moment of the inner imperative of man’s relationship with nature. The initial works displayed a unique transcendental radiance. Circular curves, thickening, and overflowing frames attest to a spacious, personal interior. Through the years, the experience of a line that sought, constructed, and multiplied through frame, space, city, and landscape turned analytical. The final Graf cycle (Figure 1), as if he spoke “from the inside” once more. Organic forms, constructed with raster and placed ascetically on the whiteness of the paper, and broad black strokes with ink and brush resonate powerfully on the whiteness, allowing for the compression and concentration of energy on the surface. There is a force within them that creates a singular whole of black characters accented like tympanums against the white silence of the background from which they emerge. It was as if an extraordinary talent had accumulated and crystallized and had now broken through the medium of drawing.

As an artist, designer, draftsman, and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Kuduz emanated the wisdom that is the result of asceticism as a way of life. Inherited from the strong code of his homeland, the Dalmatian Zagora, he cultivated with his life and work a distinctively nuanced character and expression. It is reflected in Kuduz’s artistic expression, which is as strict as it is compassionate, as cautious as it is soft, all the way up to the joyful playfulness revealed in the video work presented at the retrospective exhibition held in Zagreb’s Glyptoteka, in which he played with the movement of his black-and-white forms with flashes of color that snuck out of the serigraphy cycle and entered the form of video.

Julije Knifer (Osijek, 23 April 1924–Paris, 7 December 2004), a Croatian painter with a propensity for conciseness and minimalism, developed a black-and-white image and form in the 1960s of the 20th century that he would not abandon until the end of his creative life. His reflections on the philosophy of existence and absurdity, along with the serial music, found in meanders a repetitive, monotonous rhythm as “the simplest way to express his greatest complexity” (Horvat-Pintarić 1970). The recurring motif of the meander (Figure 2) tends to be not only a transfer of the author’s visual repertoire but also an imprint of the author’s spiritual state, his reflections, and his artistic behavior. The picture shows a part of the exhibition Julije Knifer: Without Compromise, held in 2014 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. Visible is the rhythm of the works, which “undress” the black and reveal the white through their internal logic.

Knifer establishes a rhythm of extreme contrasts by combining vertical and horizontal stringing: darkness and light, black and white. Persistence in various motifs and Spartan persistence in expressing the reality that is intrinsically imposed on him disclose the author’s ascetic disposition. Knifer’s highly refined and spiritualized artwork is the result of his exceptional consistency in the creative process. Knifer was an artist who did not follow trends but was completely committed to his own internal logic, uncompromisingly like a monk. Each action represented the spiritual process of pursuing silence, peace, and isolation, i.e., the process of entering his own world and devoting himself to ascetic work. The work of Knifer is immersed in silence as a space of potential. Peace and solitude encourage the creative process and immersion in one’s own universe. Knifer’s devotion to the meander allowed him access to a complex territory of freedom, to which he remained devoted until his demise.

Another example is Robert Motherwell’s method of painting, which involves a high level of abstraction of reality as if he were peeling away layers to get to the artist’s desired essence. “I often paint in a series, a dozen or more versions of the same motif at once-of the same theme. One brings the weakest up to the strongest, which in turn becomes the weakest and so on ad infinitum, so that one goes beyond oneself (or sometimes below!). There is no knowing, only faith. The alternative… is a black void” (Terenzio 1980, p. 9). Eliminating the superfluous results in the emergence of content that is a remnant of what is essential, is frequently unnameable and undefinable, but is simultaneously extremely human and poetic. “The subject does not pre-exist. It emerges out of the interaction between the artist and the medium. That is why, and only how a picture can be created, and why its conclusions cannot be predetermined. When you have a predetermined conclusion, you have ‘academic art’ by definition” (Terenzio 1980, p. 9). Thus, the function of abstraction is to emphasize the meaning of the work. Arriving at meaning. Directly to the point. Motherwell’s 1978 large-scale acrylic on canvas painting Reconciliation Elegy exemplifies this approach. It is on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Existence and demise. Duality. These are concepts that the artist identifies as instrumental to his artistic creativity. Aesthetics is understood not only as beauty but also as a perspective on reality. In his attempts to achieve the impression of lightness and spontaneity that he sought in his works, Motherwell realized that preparation—of tools and formats, as well as the mental preparation of the artist for work—was necessary to achieve this impression. “The content of a painting is our response to the painting’s qualitative character, as made apprehendable by its form. This content is the feeling «body-and-mind». The «body-and-mind», in turn, is an event in reality, the interplay of a sentient being and the external world. [...] It is for this reason that the «mind», in realizing itself in one of its mediums, expresses the nature of reality as felt” (Harrison and Wood 2003, p. 645). This study’s observation of the conditions required to achieve this type of expression validates Motherwell’s assertion.

Kuduz, Knifer, Motherwell, and Newman all demonstrate a fervent commitment to the artistic process, a meticulous approach to artistic investigation, and a willingness to explore perspectives and insights that may have been overlooked or not immediately apparent. In their creative processes, they all go beyond mere visual language and toward transcendental realities.

3. In Praise of Silence

The world is so loud that communication methods have ceased to exist. The Tower of Babel is a lyrical song about misunderstanding in comparison to the number of closed worlds that get more distant, estranged, and icy as people seek to approach them—the media shout, preventing the mind from separating itself and locating an anchor. The world needs silence desperately. When we encounter a profound work of art, we adopt the mentality of listening to our inner self; we enter silence. In order for the artist and the viewer to become responsive to cognition and able to listen, artistic creativity requires silence. Silence or stillness is a specific mental condition that enables us to observe reality with a heightened awareness of our own length, fragility, and the infinite that awaits us on the other side of existence. The role of silence in the creation of art is preeminent. Silence in visual language can be translated as the absence of color where white, gray, and black reside. There is something extremely potent about a space devoid of color. In a space where only light, darkness, and gray exist. Managing these relationships provides a sense of mental and intuitive pleasure. The highest degree of contrast refers to the spectrum’s conflict of opposites, in which things are more easily distinguished. In Christian symbolism, the color gray, which is composed of equal parts black and white, represents the resurrection of the dead, according to Frédéric Portal (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 2007, p. 657). In the Last Judgment scene, medieval artists dress Christ in a gray cloak. The color of ash and fog is gray. The Hebrews covered themselves in ash to express their profound pain. Throughout history, artists have discovered and invented means of expressing the unknown that they comprehend in order to find forms that speak to what is perceived.

Following this request for finding a way to express transcendent realities, methodologies specific to the artistic field (visual arts) are used predominately in this part of the research. Expanding the boundaries of qualitative research by taking a holistic approach closer to the very nature of the artistic process allows for a more complete understanding of the process itself.

Figure 3 depicts a roll of thick paper (320 gsm) measuring 120 × 2000 cm that was prepared for drawing intervention. Due to the possibility of unwinding, the roll format was utilized in the work with the intention of continuing thoughts by adding visual data that is intuitively imposed on the artist during the composing process. Specifically, during the process of creating the work, the need arises to release additional white space as a mental and emotional break. The purity of whiteness represents a new beginning. Whiteness is the void that will be filled with signs that have not yet been given life. The silence of whiteness evokes an impression of a certain sublimity that is almost solemn. The whiteness of the paper creates a vast array of possibilities for the artist’s interventions and has a dual effect: it evokes awe and a sense of responsibility for the chosen expression, and it is intertwined with a sense of anticipation and excitement before the realization of the novel possibilities.

The paper’s substantial materiality serves as a strong foundation for the artist and the drawing as a protected space. Because of the responsibility for the work, the first drawing procedure is always exciting, with feelings of self-confidence and anticipation intertwined. What signals will the body and hand send to the surface? Already after the first line, the artist’s entire being is weighing and evaluating. The intense process of interweaving intuition and the analytical part of the cognitive process is constantly active on the trail of Arnheim’s theory, and in the artist’s excited, emotional state, this interplay is intensified by the layering of visual data that appears on the canvas or paper. The complexity and multiplicity of interrelationships between parts of the whole necessitate constant and additional processing. This includes making decisions such as giving up a move or assessing the risk of an intervention and making decisions in response to the questions: where, how, and when to react to the material; which section to reinforce; and where should the line of whiteness be are all influenced by a variety of factors. This evaluation and decision-making process occurs extremely quickly, condensed, and intensively in the artist’s body, mind, and soul.

Story from the Beginning (Figure 4) is a gestural ink drawing on a smooth paper surface composed of expressive brushstrokes. The ink is either undiluted or washed with mineral-carbonated water. The theme of the work is the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which represents the beginning in Eden when things began to deteriorate, and man was expelled from a place of peace where he had not seen his nakedness because he was clean. The work was created in complete silence in the studio, with only the sounds of body movements and brush strokes or surface movement audible. The creation of a drawing emphasizes physicality. It was produced by walking, dancing, and standing on the floor-laid paper.

The movements of the body when drawing with a broad, coarse brush are impulsive and rendered with strong strokes; they alternate with sections rendered with specially crafted “tools”. Brushes and ready-made purchased sketching instruments are often insufficient for carrying out the intended intervention. For example, the brush lacks the resistance to leave traces on the surface that can only be formed by strong pressure. The artist then uses his own inventions and interventions to create the tool (Figure 5). The addition of different brush extensions, which increase the distance between the paper and the body of the artist performing the stroke, enables the artist to achieve different stroke qualities. In addition to modifying the tools, the material, in this case, ink, is also modified. In the work Story from the Beginning, the washed ink technique is explored. Instead of water, mineral-carbonated water was used, which allowed for new expressive possibilities. Not only was transparency achieved, but a specific texture (Figure 6) was also achieved, which cannot be achieved by mixing ink with non-carbonated water.

Drawing as a medium has the power to bring the whiteness of the paper to life or to accentuate its stillness even more. It always possesses a sense of intimacy and individuality, regardless of whether it is created in an artist’s studio or in front of an audience that participates in the act of drawing. It always bears the imprint of the private, with a particular correlation spectrum between the private and the public.

In the work Time that is given (Figure 7), the concept of time as a given dimension that is only accessible in the present is developed. The artwork was made by combining an ink drawing and a digital drawing. In artistic creation, introspective digging and the discovery of genesis are essential in attempts to convey transcendent realities. It is research that encompasses all three tenses: the past, the future, and the present.

4. Towards Conclusion: Art as a Catalyst

Despite postmodernist and post-postmodernist theory and inquiry, art arises from the most intimate recesses of the human soul. It is not the product of philosophy or dogma. In systems without freedom, creativity is developed despite rather than because of, as we have seen throughout the history of the globe. The current infrastructure contemptuously and abhorrently rejects the worship of God. Many atheists, on the other hand, worship art fervently or demonstrate some type of worship. Gerhard Richter claims: “The church is no longer adequate as a means of affording experience of the transcendental and of making religion real—and so art has been transformed from a means into the sole provider of religion” (Richter and Elger 2009, p. 34).

Fabrice Hadjadj identifies iconoclasm as one of the characteristics of modernity, as well as its opposite, the creation of icons or even idols, and illustrates this duality with the Bible, which is read and condemned as a profane source, while profane works are raised to the status of sacred literature (Hadjadj 2019, p. 63). In museums, one walks silently and observes or listens with respect. The creations of human hands are considered sacrosanct. Artists are revered, even after death, as prophets. But is that the true intent and purpose of the work of art? In his assessment of modernity, Hadjadj concludes that a person who embraces modernity without criticism, polemics, or conflicts is not truly modern. He asserts that the true moderns are always anti-modern in one manner or another (Hadjadj 2019, p. 66). In this setting, the purpose of art should be questioned. To paraphrase Merton (Merton and Sweeney 2017, p. 1), who discusses the separation of theology and spirituality as a disaster, we can also refer to the separation of art and spirituality as a catastrophe. Our culture cultivates a rationalist personality. Everything associated with the transcendent or mystical is deemed unscientific and, therefore, unsuitable from an academic perspective. On the other hand, there is a discernible increase in the search for the beyond, which is practiced through a variety of non-Christian practices. People’s spiritual hunger is like a gaping chasm that waits to be filled. Existentially and ontologically, spiritual hunger is man’s most important question. Christian mysticism contains a hidden treasure from which artists have drawn throughout history. The Nobel laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez (Jiménez 2022, pp. 52–53) sings as follows in Transparency, God, Transparency from his 1952 collection of poems “God Desired and Desiring” (Dios deseado y deseante):

I feel you, god of the future, between my hands,

you are entwined with me, here in a beautiful struggle

of love, just like

fire with its own air.

If we view art as the materialization of spiritual realities that arise from man’s need for spirituality, we can appreciate the significance of art in human life. According to Langdon Gilkey, art engenders novel perspectives, enabling individuals to perceive beyond superficialities and delve into deeper layers of meaning. Moreover, art unveils concealed truths residing within the realm of the ordinary. “Art opens up the truth hidden within the ordinary; it provides a new entrance into reality and pushes us through that entrance” (Gilkey 1995, p. 189). The spiritual wasteland of our time becomes tangible through the works of art created in contemporary artistic production. Numerous works of art express the search for the meaning of life in a clear and unambiguous manner. Sincerity enables the transmission of experience without artifice when attempting to present the inexpressible and indescribable in a nonverbal manner. The eloquence of artistic interpretation and speech is dependent on the level of expression employed when addressing perceived realities. The objective is to communicate the intangible and the inexpressible, to reflect the secret life of the soul, and to allude to its hidden relationship with God so that it becomes palpable to the viewer or listener. Daniel Gustafsson states, “If art is to have any ontological significance, we need a sense of human creativity as synergetic with the divine” (Gustafsson 2019).

In the digital drawing Blessed are Those Who Endure in Peace (Figure 8), the offered reality has been reshaped and aestheticized; it operates according to its own laws. In its poverty and its fragmentation, it speaks of being, evoking the face of life and death, deeply human, with an ineradicably rooted hope in the living man and his extension beyond this time and this space—a man with immortal life.

5. Conclusions

The primary objective of this article was to examine the potential of art as a means of expressing transcendent realities, with a particular emphasis on the artistic creative process. The possibilities for uncovering the unspeakable through an artistic, creative process that facilitates intuitive understanding are studied. The process is examined from the perspective of the artist, and author of the article, drawing upon the author’s firsthand observations of a creative process. This study explored the potential methods of expressing the transcendental within the realm of visual arts by analyzing three interconnected concepts that play a significant role in the artistic creative process: intuition, asceticism, and silence. The artistic investigation conducted in this study has demonstrated that visual art has the means to convey transcendent realities. Art can lead to the transcendent and open the mind, eyes, and heart to that which is beyond through the materialization of intuited ideas in the artistic process. In the creative process, artists can go beyond mere visual language and access the realm of transcendental reality. The artist possesses the capacity to apprehend a transcendental reality, which manifests itself gradually and exclusively through the act of artistic creation. Drawing, no matter the medium—traditional ink drawing or digital drawing—can convey transcendental realities in artwork by means of artistic tools that are often invented by the artist in the art praxis. The byproducts of artistic research and artistic creation are sketches left behind by the artist.

A form of artistic asceticism—self-discipline, self-questioning, and composure—are essential for an artist so that he does not waste the forces available to him but rather channels them into expression.

Research also found silence to be a prerequisite for the mental state of heightened awareness that the artistic process requires if it is to express the transcendent.