Awakening

In 1938 Agnes Pelton became a founding member of the Transcendental Painting Group, an organization of New Mexican artists focusing on spiritual works. Their manifesto announced their goal to “carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new concepts of space, color, light, and design, to imaginative realms that are idealistic and spiritual.” The title suggests multiple connotations alluding to mystical, physical, intellectual, or spiritual awakenings.

Pelton wrote in her journals that the yellow celestial form represents Gabriel’s trumpet. The contours of the mountain peaks in the landscape from the silhouette of her father’s profile. A complicated figure in Pelton’s life, her father deserted her and her mother in childhood, later dying of a morphine overdose.