Ithell Colquhoun was a British artist, writer, poet and occultist.
She trained at the Slade School of Fine Art and over her long career Colquhoun explored themes of sexuality, transformation, nature and the magical in the art. From the late 1930s she was part of the Surrealist milieu and was influenced by the automatic techniques used by artists Roberto Matta and Gordon Onslow Ford. Colquhoun developed a personal psycho-morphological practice with her theory of “mantic stains”, including decalcomania, frottage, collage, fumage, ecremage and other chance-based procedures which allowed her to bypass conscious control and access deeper psychic revelations.
In her essays The Mantic Stain, 1949 and The Children of the Mantic Stain 1951 Colquhoun explained that creating a spontaneous mark could lead to accessing a deeper consciousness which could then be developed pictorially with conscious control. For Colquhoun, these stains were not just aesthetic devices but tools of gnosis, aligning with esoteric principles of scrying, and inner vision.
She explained “The development of the initial stain may proceed along lines of complete abstraction, in which case the resulting shapes will not recall anything seen in nature. Or there may be a hint of natural objects which can be organised and intensified into a design. Or, again, a treasury of symbolic scenes or ‘mind-pictures’ may be dredged up from the depths of the phantasy-life, that dream world of which many are hardly aware in waking consciousness”. Ithell Colquhoun 1951
Colquhoun’s literary works, including The Goose of Hermogenes (1961) and The Living Stones (1957), are still popular today and, like her artworks, reflect her lifelong interest in myth, landscape, and mystical symbolism. Her paintings and writings continue to influence artists, scholars, and occult practitioners around the world.
A lasting legacy of Colquhoun is also her Taro deck which she created in the 1970s and startled audiences when their kaleidoscopic and abstract forms were exhibited for the first time in 1977 at the Newlyn Art Gallery in Penzance.
“This design for a Taro-pack is both personal and traditional. It renders the essence of each card by the non-figurative means of pure colour, applied automatically in the manner of the Psycho-morphological movement in Surrealism. The pack is traditional in following Instructions drawn from the texts of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It is, however, distinct from the figurative pack evolved in the Orders’ early days by MacGregor Mathers and his wife Moina for the use of their students. The more advanced among the latter received the initiated titles of the cards which Illustrate their character as meditation-glyphs. The title acts as Mantra to the design’s Yantra. […] After I had completed the pack I saw some slides showing nebulas in outer space and the birth of stars. These recalled my designs and confirmed my conviction of their cosmographic function”.
Ithell Colquhoun 1977.
For more information about Ithell Colquhoun there is an excellent and comprehensive website dedicated to her art and life by Richard Shillitoe – IthellColquhoun.co.uk
Ithell’s Tarot deck can be purchased from Fulgur Press
