Shaker Visionary Image 1935 - 1942

Orville Cline made this visionary image with graphite and colored pencil, probably sometime in the mid to late twentieth century. It’s really intricate, obsessive, and kind of wonderful. I can imagine him carefully crafting each symbol, each bird, each tiny detail, lost in the act of drawing, maybe in a trance. Look at the way he fills the space, not just with images, but with words, little blocks of text that seem to vibrate with secret meanings. The color is delicate, almost faded, like it’s been kissed by the sun for decades. This reminds me a little of Hilma af Klint’s diagrammatic paintings, where she was also mapping unseen spiritual realms. Cline’s piece is folksier, but it has that same yearning to make visible what's just beyond our grasp. Maybe that’s what all art is, in the end, a way of touching something just out of reach. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What visions might we capture if we dared to draw what we feel, not just what we see?