Marjorie Cameron Mystery Babylon

Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (April 23, 1922 – June 24, 1995), who professionally used the mononym Cameron, was an American artist, poet, actress, and occultist. A follower of Thelema, the new religious movement established by the English occultist Aleister Crowley, she was also the wife of rocket pioneer and fellow Thelemite Jack Parsons..Born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, Cameron volunteered for services in the United States' Navy during the Second World War, after which she settled in Pasadena, California, where she met Parsons, who believed her to be the "Elemental woman" that he had invoked in the early stages of a series of sex magic rituals called the Babalon Working. They entered a relationship and were married in 1946. Their relationship was often strained, although Parsons sparked her involvement in Thelema and occultism. After Parsons' death in an explosion at their home in 1952, Cameron came to suspect that her husband had been assassinated and began rituals to communicate with his spirit. Cameron's recognition as an artist increased after her death, when her paintings made appearances in exhibitions across the U.S. As a result of increased attention on Parsons, Cameron's life also gained greater coverage in the early 2000s, while in 2011 a biography of Cameron authored by Spencer Kansa was published.

Cameron's occult beliefs closely impacted her artworks.According to The Huffington Post, Cameron's artwork merges "Crowley's occult with the surrealism and symbolism of French poets, yielding dark yet whimsical depictions buzzing with otherworldly power".The art curator Philippe Vergne described her work as being situated on "the edge of surrealism and psychedelia", embodying "an aspect of modernity that deeply doubts and defies cartesian logic at a moment in history when these values have shown their own limitations".

Cameron's biographer Spencer Kansa was of the opinion that Cameron exhibited parallels with the Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton, both in terms of her physical appearance and the similarities between their artistic styles.Harrington also saw similarities in the work of Cameron and the artists Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini.On the website of the Cameron Parsons Foundation, Michael Duncan expressed the view that Cameron's work rivals that of "fellow surrealists" like Carrington, Fini, Remedios Varo, and Ithell Colquhoun, while also appearing "fascinatingly prescient" of the works by later artists Kiki Smith, Amy Cutler, Karen Kilimmck, and Hernan Bas.In later years, Cameron would often be erroneously labelled a Beat artist because she inhabited many of the same social circles as prominent Beat poets and writers.Rejecting this label, Kansa instead described Cameron as "a pre-Beat bohemian, whose heart lay in Romanticism"Wikipedia

Teofil Ociepka - Painter Occultist and Theosophist

Teofil Ociepka (born April 22, 1891 in Janów Śląski, died January 15, 1978 in Bydgoszcz) was a Polish self-taught primitivist painter, occultist, and theosophist. Along with Nikifor, he was one of the best known Polish primitivists.
"Ociepka was an amateur, self-taught artist, ‘primitivist,’ and an incredibly talented and inspired theosopher. He didn’t continue his education past elementary school. After his father died, when Teofil was merely fifteen years old, he started supporting his family. He took up all kinds of jobs, to eventually start working at a mine, and remain a miner until his retirement. At the same time, he was one of the leaders of the so called Janów Occultist Community, members of which also included, among others, Ewald Gawlik and Erwin Sówka. Their paintings are characterised by an aura of mystery and symbolism, even though they all had very specific, local roots. They came from social circles tied to the oldest districts of industrial Silesia: Janów, Szopienice, Giszowiec, and Nikiszowiec. They carefully reproduced and documented their day-to-day life in those particular civilisational and cultural spheres, their everyday landscape, customs, and local belief systems, at the same time enhancing them with fantastic themes.Despite their similar interests, works of the Janów painters distinctly reflected the respective, unique characters. Ociepka’s painting oeuvre especially stood out among them, which earned him a global recognition. His paintings are exceptional in how they blend excerpts from life of miners, Silesian fairy tales, and occultist literature. They are characterised by visionary invention and bold use of colour. Altogether, it creates an incredible combination, which intrigues anthropologists and collectors to this day."(Author: Małgorzata Kitowska-Łysiak, Institute of Art History at Catholic University of Lublin, November 2007, transl. AM, April 2017 culture.pl )

Ithell Colquhoun - artist, writer, occultist

Ithell Colquhoun (9 October 1906 – 11 April 1988) was a British Surrealist painter and author. She was born in Shillong, Eastern Bengal and Assam, British India. From the 1930s to her death, her work was exhibited widely in Britain and Germany.Margaret Ithell Colquhoun was born in Shillong, Eastern Bengal and Assam, British India. Her parents were Henry Colquhoun, an assistant to the ambassador in Manipur, and his wife Georgia. Colquhoun was educated in Rodwell, near Weymouth, Dorset before attending Cheltenham Ladies' College. There she studied topics such as the cabbala and the occult.Colquhoun did take some art courses, but she was largely self-taught. Colquhoun studied for a period at the Slade School of Art in London, under Henry Tonks and Randolph Schwabe, before travelling to France in 1931. It was in Paris that she discovered surrealism and was especially influenced by the works of Salvador Dalí. Another influence on Colquhoun was the psychomorphological works of Roberto Matta and Onslow Ford. Her first one-woman exhibition of works was at Cheltenham Art Gallery in 1936. Soon after, she joined the political group, Artists' International Association. She took part in the 1939 exhibition Living Art in England on an independent basis, but that same year she met Breton in Paris and joined the English surrealist group. By 1939, Colquhoun had joined the English Surrealist Group and in June she and Rowland Penrose showed their works in a joint exhibition at Mayor Gallery. There they created a scandal by asking a vagrant to sit in the window.

 Colquhoun's early works included a series of enlarged images of flora, occupying the full canvas and painted almost photographically. By the late 1930s, she had painted two significant pieces; Scylla in 1938, whose joined rocks in the water creates the impression of a "feminine opening" whilst also showing phallic imagery, and Rivières tièdes which shows liquids flowing from a Mediterranean church.
In the 1940s, Colquhoun's works were experiments to explore consciousness and the subconscious. She did this by using recognised methods such as decalcomania, fumage, frottage and collage. Colquhoun went further, developing new techniques such as superautomatism, stillomanay, parsemage, and entoptic graphomania writing about them in her article The mantic stain.
Three works which stand out during the 1940s are The Pine Family, which deals with dismemberment and castration, A Visitation which shows a flat heart shape with multicoloured beams of light and Dreaming Leaps, a homage to Sonia Araquistain.Colquhoun did not define herself as a Surrealist artist, as she only too part in a single Surrealist exhibit. Instead she considered herself "independent"Wikipedia