The Cloud Gallery — Artist Tony Schaefer — About Me

Artist Statement

My practice is a multidisciplinary exploration of spiritual awakening, spanning digital art, paintings on linen, works on paper, and text, in the form of articles or diaries. Central to my visual language are two figures: one that never fits inside the frame (God), imperceptible at times, and "the everybody" — an archetypal, over-simplified figure that serves as a witness, a projector, and a passive compositional device. Whether I am working with pixels, paint, or sound, I seek to distill my personal experience and subtle spiritual visions into elemental forms. My series, such as The Hum of Eternity, integrates a sonic dimension into the canvas, while my digital work allows for the use of internal Light and sound, exploring the layering of imagery to create complex and diverse pictures with recurring messages.

I make this work to visualize a journey of self-discovery and spiritual awakening. After leaving the commercial art industry in Sydney and spending nearly two decades teaching A Course In Miracles internationally, I returned to my artistic practice with a renewed purpose: to question the perception of a world and a self that seems separate within it. My work explores a reality beyond the constraints of time, space, and physical identity. Drawing on the metaphysical principles of A Course In Miracles and following in the footsteps of fellow spiritual pioneers Klee, Kandinsky, and Hilma af Klint, I use art to express a "Spiritual Solution" — a way of seeing beyond the material world and the distractions of identity, religion, and relationships.

I invite you into the interaction between the spiritual and the material. I want to engage you with a recognisable figure/form that allows for subtle recurring symbols of transformation, such as interlocking rings, musical notation, text and sound that emerged in my work as symbols for spiritual communication. I want the presence of "the everybody", as a reflection of yourself, the protagonist, the witness and the hero of your own journey. Ultimately, I want viewers to recognize that the process of self-discovery, spiritual transformation and Eternal communication is unfolding, at some level, for everyone. Often, these imperceptible sonic dimensions that bridge the gap between the visual and the inexpressible, are guiding you back to the Truth of your Self. This is the inexpressible — that which lies deep within each of us, waiting to be listened to and trusted.

Bio

My artistic journey has been one of departure and return — a cyclical path that has taken me from the halls of the National Art School to the museums of Sydney, across the world, and back again, carrying a transformed vision.

In the late 1980s, I graduated from the National Art School (East Sydney Tech College) with a Fine Arts Certificate. The decade that followed immersed me in the institutional life of making art — working for the Museum of Contemporary Art and Grafton Regional Gallery, and assisting with exhibitions at The Sherman Gallery and The Art Gallery of New South Wales. Yet beneath this professional exterior, restlessness was building. I had seen things that deeply questioned my understanding of reality, purpose, and place.

By 1998, disillusioned with the art industry and searching for something beyond its boundaries, I left Sydney. That search led me to A Course In Miracles, and to an unexpected journey: a profound spiritual awakening that would reshape everything. For nearly two decades, I taught A Course In Miracles around the world, setting aside my artistic practice to pursue a different kind of expression.

Returning to Australia with my wife, I felt the stirring of a renewed creative vision. But the artist who returned was not the one who had left. The work now had to serve a different purpose.

I re-entered formal study as a pathway back to practice, beginning with the Diploma of Visual Arts at Coffs Harbour TAFE (graduating with Distinction and a TAFE Award of Excellence), followed by the Advanced Diploma, and culminating in a Bachelor of Fine Art from Curtin University in 2020. During this period of reimmersion, two profound influences shaped my direction: the pedagogical writings of Paul Klee, and Kandinsky's seminal Concerning The Spiritual In Art. The exhibition The Spiritual In Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985 became a touchstone, connecting my personal journey to a broader historical lineage.

This foundation gave birth to new bodies of work. The Hum of Eternity — a series of 1600mm square paintings on linen — represented my first serious attempt to integrate sound with visual art, drawing directly from the text of A Course In Miracles to create an ambient, nearly imperceptible sonic dimension. I began constructing my own stretchers using Golden Rectangle ratios, experimenting with traditional gesso while grounding compositions in principles of dynamic symmetry.

The butterfly emerged in 2016 as a recurring symbol — a visual metaphor for the spiritual transformation I had lived. My first solo exhibition, held at Artspace on 45 Coramba, marked a public return after decades of quiet evolution. During the 2020 Plunge Festival, I exhibited at Breimba Lane Exhibition — Plunge Festival and founded the Society of Spiritual Artists, an online community for those exploring the intersection of art and spiritual enquiry.

Today, my work spans several ongoing series — The Hum of Eternity, Temple Resonance, and the digital studies — all drawing on the same lineage of spiritual abstraction pioneered by Klee, Kandinsky, and Hilma af Klint. My work is held in private collections across Australia and internationally. Alongside my studio practice, I founded The Cloud Gallery (2014) and the Society of Spiritual Artists (2020). I welcome enquiries from collectors, galleries, and fellow artists.