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wikipedia says that Spiritualism is a religion that began in the United States and flourished from the 1840s to the 1920s. Spiritualism is theistic, believing in God, but the distinguishing feature is belief that spirits of the dead can be contacted by “mediums” and provide information about the afterlife.
This religion birthed many outsider artists called Mediumistic artists, that is artists who evoke spirits who guide them in their creative processes. Recently seen at La Maison Rouge is French Mediumistic artist Augustin Lesage who viewed himself as a tool and quietly produced work through the instruction of spirits.
There is a whole utopia of Mediumistic artists who produce ’spirit drawings’. One of many artists from the British Outsider Artist exhibit at Halle Saint Pierre in Paris are Madge Gill.
Born an illegitimate child in Essex, she spent much of her early years in seclusion and was placed in an orphanage at the age of 9. She was subsequently sent to Canada to work on a farm, where she stayed until she was 19 before moving back to East Ham to live with her aunt, who introduced her to Spiritualism and astrology. At the age of 25, she married her cousin, Thomas Edwin Gill, a stockbroker. Together they had three sons with their second, Reginald, dying of the Spanish flu. The following year she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl and almost died herself, contracting a serious illness that left her bedridden for several months and blind in her left eye.
After recovering from her illness, she took a sudden and passionate interest in drawing, creating thousands of mediumistic works over the following 40 years, most done with ink in black and white. The works came in all sizes, from postcard-sized to huge sheets of fabric, some over 30 feet (9.1 m) long. She claimed to be guided by a spirit she called “Myrninerest” (my inner rest) and often signed her works in this name. The figure of a young woman in intricate dress appeared thousands of times in her work, and is often thought to be a representation of herself or her lost daughter. She drew this woman in various moods and appearances, almost never showing her entire body, and with her clothes interwoven into the surrounding complex of lines and patterns.
more discussion on outsider art here.
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