THREAD LINES AND SPIRIT LINES
When I first saw Georgiana Houghton’s spirit drawings, I felt an instant, almost bodily recognition: Oh, she was listening to the same hum. Houghton, a Victorian gentlewoman (1814-1884), claimed that spirit guides—Titian, Correggio, and dead relatives, moved her hand. The result was a web of translucent strands, loops, and knots so intricate that even now they look as if they’ve been plotted by software. No horizon, no figure: just thread-like energy fields curling across the page.
Years later, when I began painting my own Thread Series I wasn’t thinking about Houghton; I was looking for ways that what was real intersected with the abstract. I “drew” with the threads, letting them fall onto colored paper, sometimes creating a simple line, other times piling into a mass made of thread. I made hundreds of configurations, which I photographed. When they left the realm of the real, is when I became interested.
Process parallels
Surrender of control. Houghton prayed, opened herself, and let the pencil wander. I set up a “roulette” table of real threads, spun them, photographed the tumble, then copied exactly what chance gave me—no edits.
Single, continuous gesture. She never lifted her brush until the form was complete; I painted each strand in a single pull, resisting the urge to tidy the overlap.
Color as code. Houghton believed magenta meant “Divine Love,” yellow “Intellectual Power.” I assigned no theology, but I used color as a carrier wave, letting each line lift into a buzz.
Where we diverge
Houghton’s work sits inside the page; it remains intimate, handwritten, almost bodily. My threads push outward—the canvases are six feet across, the illusion larger than the viewer—and the photographic under-pinning keeps them tethered to the material world. She wanted to prove the unseen; I wanted to reconcile it with daily vision.
How the Thread Series pointed toward Unified Field and Lightness of Being
Working on the threads taught me two things that became the spine of later cycles:
Space within line. A single strand, exquisitely observed, can open a bigger dimension than any horizon line. That concept enlarges into the veils, nets, and star-fields of Unified Field.
Attention as worship. The act of tracing every filament forced me into the same meditative zone Houghton called “communion.” In Lightness of Being I went further, letting energetic dots take the place of “real” objects.
In her 1871 London exhibition (the one she financed herself because no gallery would touch “spirit abstraction”), Houghton hung 155 drawings, sold none, and died almost forgotten. Visionary work is less about outcome than frequency; you tune in, do the work, and trust the century to catch up.
If you want to see the Thread Series: high-resolution images and process shots are in the viewing room here → leslieparke.com/viewing-room/the-thread-series.
And if Georgiana Houghton is new to you, chase down the Courtauld catalogue “Spirit Drawings,” then look again at the painted threads. You’ll see her whisper in every filament.