Cosmic Series, 1979–1982

Between 1979 and 1982, Isham embarked on an ambitious group of spray works that divides into three series, each under the rubric “Cosmic.” For this deeply spiritual artist, such works represent an internal exploration where drifting colors interact with suggestive forms to create surfaces rich in personal symbolism. As if conflating Far Eastern cosmography and Haitian animist religion, Isham combines ethereal airbrushed sprays with variegated schematic renderings of calligraphic shapes. Isham’s pictographs seem anthropomorphic—inhabiting visible, yet occluded, earth-bound worlds. Isham’s iconography responds to the syncretic religion of Vodou, a spirit-based religion that incorporated the Christianity of Roman Catholic missionaries. It suggests unseen spirit and earthly elements that float amid striations of prismatic color and light. Further, Isham’s involvement with Hindu-based meditation entered into this rich brew of ideation. It is no surprise, then, that the artist would seek to combine the cosmologies of Christianity, Vodou, and Hinduism into total environments of visually expressive expanses of color.  Isham’s muted, misty mindscapes relate to land and sky, but primarily come through—and express—a meditative state. As she wrote at the time, “As long as the eyes are not purified, our vision does not become divine.” After receiving Shaktipat [grace], Isham felt a sense of visual purification: “In that divine state I could see unity everywhere.”

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