Ithell Colquhoun: Art, Magic, and The Living Landscape

Over the past decade there has been a resurgence of interest in art that embodies a spirituality rooted in Nature. Ithell Colquhoun - Genius of The Fern Loved Gully by Amy Hale, is a particularly interesting study of these themes, in a beautifully produced edition from Strange Attractor Press.

This renewed attention has not arisen in a vacuum. It reflects a broader cultural longing for meaning that is embodied, local, and sensuous, rather than abstract or purely conceptual. Across contemporary art, psychotherapy, ecology, and spiritual practice, there is a visible turning toward forms of knowing that are relational and place based. Ithell Colquhoun stands as a prescient figure within this movement, not because she anticipated current trends, but because she never abandoned a worldview in which matter itself is alive, ensouled, and communicative.

Nature, the Numinous, and Localised Power

Living traditions that see reverence for the Numinous as having as much to do with a particular tree, standing stone, spring, or other such localised expression of power - the surging forth of 'Hecate's fountain', to use a more esoteric description - have once again become sources of inspiration for many, rather than the artifacts of dusty book shelves.

Colquhoun's art emerges from precisely this orientation. Her paintings, writings, and magical practices are rooted in direct encounter with landscape, especially the ancient and myth saturated terrain of Cornwall. For her, the land was not a backdrop or a theme, but an active participant. Caves, wells, rock formations, and coastal features were not symbols to be decoded from a distance, but thresholds through which deeper realities disclosed themselves. This understanding places Colquhoun in continuity with pre modern cosmologies, as well as with later depth psychological and animistic perspectives that resist the reduction of the world to dead matter.

Matter, Body, and the Reclamation of the Earth

Earth and Nature reclaimed from 'demonic' categorisation, and a legacy of repressive faith that could not bear what it could not control. The human body, perhaps more specifically the female body, is no longer feared and rejected, or merely ornamental, but the microcosm of celestial forces. Stones are living "animated intelligences," and matter is not the cold inert absence of conscious life that materialism would like us to believe.

Colquhoun's work consistently affirms this vision. In imagery that returns eros to the erotic, her fascination with alchemical processes, and attention to bodily forms, all challenge the inherited split between spirit and matter. The body is not an obstacle to spiritual insight, but one of its primary instruments. Sexuality, imagination, and creativity are understood as sacred forces, capable of revealing cosmic patterns through lived experience. In this sense, her art can be read as both mystical and political, offering a refusal of traditions that have sought to dominate nature, women, and either deny or denigrate the unconscious.

Cultural Amnesia and the Return of the Hidden

Of course, this has always been the case for some people, but there can be no doubt about a particular cultural moment which has rejuvenated awareness of many artists, mystics, magicians, and witches, whose work was kept veiled from a wider audience by the cloak of prejudice. Some would say a certain point has been reached where it might even be time to make 'the occult' occult again, as rampant powers of commercialisation always destroy what is sacred in the end.

The rediscovery of Colquhoun must be understood within this wider process of cultural remembering. For much of the twentieth century, her commitment to magic and esotericism rendered her marginal within mainstream art history. Even within Surrealism, a movement that claimed allegiance to the unconscious and the irrational, her seriousness about occult practice placed her at odds with a largely male dominated circle that often treated magic as metaphor rather than lived discipline. What is returning now is not merely her imagery, but the depth of her commitment to a way of life in which art, ritual, and ethical responsibility were inseparable.

Ithell Colquhoun, Art and Magic at the Crossroads

The work of Ithell Colquhoun is one of the most high profile recent examples of an artist whose work has found fresh and far-reaching acclaim, existing at the fine art/magic/social reform crossroads; recent exhibitions at Tate St.Ives in the artists Cornish heartland, and Tate Britain attest to this. For Colquhoun this word is preferable to 'intersection', which only conjures an image of bland asphalt, whereas the 'crossroads' is a place of encounter with strange forces, the opposer, where earth gets under your fingernails like materials in a studio. The artist as one who walks between worlds, in many respects.

This image of the crossroads is crucial. In myth and folklore, crossroads are liminal zones where boundaries blur and unexpected encounters occur. They are associated with Hecate, with tricksters, and with moments of decision and transformation. Colquhoun inhabited this space not only thematically, but practically. She moved between painting and writing, between Surrealism and ceremonial magic, between solitary vision and collective reform. Her engagement with feminism, ecology, and spiritual autonomy places her firmly within conversations that feel urgently contemporary.

Surrealism, Automatism, and Magical Method

Colquhoun was associated with British Surrealism, yet her use of automatism differed significantly from that of many of her peers. For her, automatic techniques were not simply a means of accessing personal fantasy or unconscious desire. They were methods of attunement, ways of listening to forces that exceeded the personal psyche. Drawing, painting, and writing became forms of divination, akin to scrying or geomancy. This orientation aligns her practice more closely with esoteric traditions than with modernist experimentation alone.

Her interest in alchemy further deepens this perspective. Alchemical imagery appears throughout her work, not as historical reference, but as living process. Transformation is understood as something that occurs through patience, attention, and surrender to natural rhythms. In an era obsessed with speed and productivity, Colquhoun's work offers a radically different temporality, one in which meaning unfolds slowly and cannot be forced.

Cornwall, Myth, and the Living Landscape

Cornwall was not merely a place of residence for Colquhoun, but a spiritual geography. Its megaliths, caves, and coastal paths formed an initiatory landscape through which she oriented her life and work. She wrote extensively about specific sites, approaching them with both scholarly care and devotional sensitivity. Myth, for Colquhoun, was not a dead inheritance, but a mode of perception through which the land revealed itself.

This deep engagement with place resonates strongly today, as ecological crisis forces a reconsideration of humanity's relationship with the more than human world. Colquhoun does not offer solutions in any conventional sense, but she models an attitude of reverence, reciprocity, and imaginative participation that feels increasingly necessary.

Why Ithell Colquhoun Matters Now

The contemporary return to Colquhoun's work is not simply an act of correcting an oversight, though it is certainly that. It is also a recognition that her vision speaks to present day longings for depth, meaning, and connection in a world that often feels fragmented and disenchanted. Her refusal to separate art from life, or spirituality from the body, challenges many inherited assumptions about what it means to be an artist, a thinker, or a spiritual seeker.

To encounter Colquhoun is to be invited into a worldview in which stones speak, landscapes dream, and creativity is inseparable from ethical and spiritual responsibility. At a time when many are seeking ways to live more attentively and imaginatively within a damaged world, her work offers not answers, but orientation. It points toward a mode of being that is participatory, ensouled, and quietly defiant in the face of forces that would reduce the world to resource alone.

Bringing these themes to bear in your own life, art, or engagement with therapeutic work

Colquhoun offers a vital reminder that imagination is not an escape from reality, but a mode of encounter with it. Her work invites a listening stance toward images, bodies, and landscapes, one that resonates strongly with depth oriented psychotherapy and soul centred creative practice. To stay with her images is to practice a form of attention that is ethical as well as aesthetic, an attention that remembers the world is alive, and that we are already in relationship with it.

---

Andrew Phillips is a Visual Artist, Psychotherapist, and Creative Mentor in south Wales.

Thank you for reading this article. You are welcome to contact me with your questions and enquiries. Please use the form or email address found at the foot of each page on my website.

• Psychotherapy sessions online by video in the UK. (HCPC registered Art Psychotherapist).

• Online Creative Mentoring sessions to enrich your vision for life. A Soul-oriented approach to key themes including art & creativity, spirituality, nature & psyche, including reflective practice for professionals. This is available for clients worldwide.

• Shop Original artwork can be purchased from my website. UK delivery is included in the prices shown, and global shipping can be easily arranged.