Concerning The Spiritual In Art

Rahn Marion was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in September 1993. He attended MICA, the Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, Maryland, majoring in Painting with a concentration in Film, and has taught at the University of Memphis since 2023.

As a young working artist, Rahn has sought out jobs that keep him close to the arts scene in Memphis. He's worked at a local, family-owned frame shop, always staying within arm's length of creative work that supports or inspires his own practice, and has worked as production personnel for other artists on commission, as well as in welding alongside his studio practice. He formerly served as Minister of Art and Resident with First Congregational Church, an experience that has shaped his artistic practice and his ongoing journey into mysticism, theology, and identity.

In recent years, Rahn's practice has moved decisively onto the national stage. He is represented by Monya Rowe Gallery in New York and Sheet Cake Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2024, he presented his first New York solo exhibition, Medieval Jazz, at Monya Rowe Gallery — a body of work reworking Medieval and society-portrait iconography through a queer, Black Southern lens. He followed this in 2025 with a second solo exhibition at Monya Rowe Gallery, Where Spirit Meets Bone. Sheet Cake Gallery has also featured Marion's work in two art fairs: The Armory Show in 2025 and the Atlanta Art Fair in 2024.

Rahn currently teaches oil painting at the University of Memphis, continuing to shape the next generation of artists in the city that raised him.

www.rahnmarionart.com

www.instagram.com/rahn_marion

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Andrew Humke is an American artist born in Cincinnati, Ohio, currently working between Austin and Marseille. He earned his B.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design. His practice explores motifs as historical and geographical references, using simple, universal forms, luminous color, and raw, unstretched canvases.

Working from notebooks filled with sketches, Humke develops large-scale compositions, often six feet square or more, structured around ornamental and architectural archetypes—arches, vessels, palms, and columns—set in tension with organic pattern and growth. These recurring forms function as thresholds or containers, resisting attachment to any single culture while evoking shared visual languages that recur across civilizations. Color plays a central role, drawing from ancient frescoes, Mediterranean light, and the compositional clarity of quattrocento painting, alongside the quiet rigor of Giorgio Morandi.

Often painted on the ground, sometimes in Provence, his works maintain a direct relationship to surface, scale, and edge. Precision, repetition, and radiance are held within raw boundaries, producing a contemplative, human-centered approach to abstraction rooted in balance, interiority, and continuity.

https://www.andrewhumke.com/

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Laurie Shapiro (b. 1990, New York) is a painter and installation artist based in NYC.  She received her BFA in 2012 from Carnegie Mellon University.  She has exhibited internationally at the Dyer Arts Center, San Diego Museum of Art, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Nashville International Airport, and SACI Florence.  Her enveloping installations have been commissioned for Otherworld, Walter Studios, and Weedmaps, where her piece “Flowers Are Not A Crime” was shown at various festivals, including The Governors Ball, Life is Beautiful, and Cali Vibes.  Shapiro has completed artist residencies at the American Academy in Rome, the Kala Art Institute, Surel’s Place, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. She has been awarded several grants, including a California Council for the Arts Fellowship and a Puffin Grant.  Her work is internationally found in public and private collections, including at SACI Florence, Bilkent University, and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.  Her work has appeared in TV segments, including WTAE and KTNV, Jhene Aiko’s 4/20 Performance with Weedmaps, and in publications, including Fiber Arts Now, Artillery Magazine, and LA Weekly.

https://laurieshapiroart.com/

https://www.instagram.com/laurieshapiroart/

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Adrian Cox (born 1988) is a painter living and working in Los Angeles, California. Cox’s studio practice involves crafting an intricate and epic mythology with his paintings. In his work, he explores questions of identity, spirituality, and our relationship with the natural world. In creating his work, he draws inspiration from art history, science fiction, mythic archetypes, and his own experience of growing up in a closeted queer family. Cox attended the University of Georgia for his undergraduate studies and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors in 2010. He obtained his Master of Fine Arts degree from Washington University in Saint Louis in 2012. Cox has exhibited his work nationally and abroad, including at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, and the Oceanside Museum of Art. His paintings have been featured by VICE, Juxtapoz, American Art Collector, Beautiful Bizarre, Hi-Fructose, Heavy Metal Magazine, and in the book Anatomy Rocks: Flesh and Bones in Contemporary Art.

https://www.adriancoxart.com/

https://www.instagram.com/adriancoxart

https://coreyhelfordgallery.com/shows/adrian-cox-4/soul-making-dream-ritual-ii/

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Jason McDonald is an artist currently based in Melbourne, Australia.
He completed his BA (Hons) Graphic Design 1995. Since then he has lived and worked in London, Singapore, Bangkok and Melbourne.
McDonald has undertaken advanced studies in consciousness, including practitioner accreditation in energetic field work, research grade brainwave state monitoring in the field of neuroscience, Meditation Teacher training and extensive education and practices in Tibetan Buddhism, Korean Buddhism,
Anthroposophy, Esoteric creativity and other wisdom traditions.
He is also deeply informed by over 20 years of meditative & spiritual practice.

His work deals with consciousness, transcendence and beauty and is at the frontier of synthesizing and anchoring energy, aesthetics, inspiration and the way in which spirit moves through art as a resource for growth and evolution.

https://www.jasonwmcdonald.com/

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Quick podcast update ! New episodes coming soon ! 🙏🏼💫

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In this episode I am joined by a dear friend, artist, poet, philosopher, and all around magical human being Matthew John Betzalel Bivalacqua. In this episode we discuss his deeply personal art process and its relationship to memory, emotion, and spiritual experience. His works explores a fresh approach to still life and the power of personal symbols encased in memory.

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Matthew John Betzalel Bivalacqua was born in Metairie LA, 1981. In 2015 he received his undergraduate degrees from the University of New Orleans, in Fine Arts and Philosophy. In 2018 Matthew John received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Orleans. After converting to Judaism, in 2021, Matthew John was awarded an artist fellowship from Pardes Institute of Jewish Learning, in Jerusalem, where he held poetry workshops.

Matthew John’s process draws subject matter from his narrative, to express a sentiment, a historical relation, or convey an identity beyond an object’s or environment’s manufactured function. The surfaces he creates are technical manipulations of traditional practices for applying mediums. Some of his influences are Van Gogh’s still lifes and David Hockney’s joiner photographs.

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In this episode I am welcomed by visual artist Terra Keck. Together we explored her initial interests in occult spirituality and how that began to evolve in her life and especially its influence over her art practice.  We discuss the nature of awareness and the importance of cultivating a space (both physical and mental) that allows for channeling and transmission to come through the creative process.  

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Terra Keck is an artist, curator, and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and her BFA from Ball State University. She is a partner at Field Projects Gallery in the Chelsea Arts District of Manhattan and cohosts the comedy-educational podcast “Witch, Yes!” Her work has been published in Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, and Oxford American Arts and can be found in permanent institutional collections in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and California. She is a regular contributing writer to Artspiel, Impulse Magazine, and Artefuse.

 www.terrakeck.com 

 Field Projects Gallery https://www.fieldprojectsgallery.com/ 

Terra’s Podcast: Witch, Yes! https://open.spotify.com/show/1kWQXQEAkBUhLRFpvqP0EJ 

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In this episode I am joined by one of my best friends on this planet, Artist and Art Therapist Elijah Chong.  Elijah and I have known each other for over a decade and have always been kindred spirits on this journey of cultivating spiritual knowledge and wisdom. In this episode we dive deep into his personal journey and talk extensively about his practice as an art therapist and how that intertwines with his own personal creative practice.  

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Born in Anchorage, Alaska, raised in Houston, Texas, Elijah Kane Chong left home to study Architecture at Texas A&M University, which is where he dedicated himself to the arts and specifically to painting. He then moved on to New Orleans to teach art and establish his career in the post-Katrina revival. There, he met up with like-minded friends and helped to establish the Krewe of Motha Roux, an independent collective of far-out creatives and freethinkers. He rededicated himself to art as service, and journeyed to Santa Fe to study Art Therapy and Counseling at Southwestern College. He currently works as a licensed mental health counselor and art therapist in St. Tammany Parish, LA and continues to expand and grow upon his practice and body of work.

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In this episode I dive deep with the incredible visionary artist and podcaster Alex Coma.  Our conversation is an incredible discussion about spiritual practice, astrology, and the synchronicities to help guide us on the path of expanding our consciousness.  

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Alex Coma is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the complex intersections between symbolism, consciousness, and esoteric knowledge. A graduate in photography from Concordia University and former scholarship recipient at the Montreal Fine Arts Academy, Coma’s practice draws on figures like Arnold Böcklin and Carl Jung. His work navigates between visual art, philosophical investigation, and spiritual exploration, deploying a rigorous methodology that questions symbolic systems, cryptographic elements, and ritual methodologies. For the past decade, Coma has studied under Egyptian spiritual teacher Shri Amir Mourad, developing meditative techniques that enable deeper access to unconscious realms and inform his artistic practice—a disciplined inner exploration that has become instrumental in his ability to perceive increasingly more profound symbolic content and archetypal energies.

His works, exhibited internationally at venues including the Visionary Art Collective in New York, the Affordable Art Fair in London and Brussels, and recognized in collections such as Colart and Ubisoft, have been acclaimed by media including CBC Arts, Vie des Arts, and La Presse. In 2023, Coma founded Roze Umbra, an initiative and platform dedicated to visionary artists, extending his commitment to collaborative artistic research that examines the subtle connections between symbolic languages and collective consciousness. As part of this initiative, he created "The Blue Hour Podcast," where he engages with visionary artists worldwide. His approach to all he does is constantly seeking a delicate balance between empirical knowledge and the ineffable mystery, offers an exploration of the borderlands of artistic creation.

Websites:

  www.alexcoma.world

Visionary Roze Grant:

 www.rozeumbra.com/visionaryrozegrant

Instagram:

@alexcoma.world⁠

@rozeumbra

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