Daniel Mirante

Daniel Mirante

Daniel Mirante is a young — thirty years old, which is young to me — visionary artist, author, and researcher fascinated with deep ecology, shamanic traditions, ancient mythology, and the creative process.

In 2000, he founded the well-known Lila website — the word lila means something like cosmic play in Sanskrit — as a creative collective and resource for people exploring what Delvin Solkinson of the Elfintome Arts Collective has called medicine culture — shamanic forms of creativity and healing, including plant-based entheogenic practices. In 2005 he studied the mische technique of oil glazes and egg tempera with Brigid Marlin. Later that year was invited by Delvin to become a collaborating member of Elfintome, which has published his work in a variety of formats.

Daniel Mirante, Hyperdimensional Receptivity (2006)

In July 2006, Mirante exhibited works at the Visionary Art Alliance exhibition at the Synergy Centre in London, and in 2007 was featured alongside other contemporary noetic painters in Laurence Caruana's Visionary Revue. In addition to exhibitions of his paintings, his writings on plants, art, and mysticism have been published in a variety of online and printed publications, including the forthcoming Feminine Mysticism in Art: Artists Envisioning the Divine, edited by Victoria Christian and Susan Stedman, a collaboration of visual works of art by contemporary visionary artists, writers, and musicians from a variety of spiritual traditions.

Daniel Mirante, Pangaian Wilderness (2006)

Mirante's use of the World Wide Web as a way of developing creative collectives is informed by his university training in interactive arts, including website development and virtual reality. He also has a diploma in sustainable community development, and has written articles on low impact buildings and communities published in Green Building magazine.

Mirante says that he is currently gaining guidance and inspiration from ayahuasca and its rainforest traditions; he has worked with ayahuasca in the setting of mestizo shamanism, Brazilian new religious traditions, and solo freeform exploration. Galleries of his ayahuasca-inspired paintings are on display here and here. Of the creative potential of ayahuasca, he writes:

Daniel Mirante, Pangaian Wilderness (2006) (Detail)

I remember being surprised, as I painted, at how organised, totemic forms began to emerge, along with unusual colour combinations that contained something of the energy of the realms I had experienced. Moreover, it soon became apparent that there were prophetic signs within the painting, indicating the deeper meanings of the forces and patterns playing out through the surface appearance of my world..... Art and ayahuasca are both teachers that can reveal that whilst we live on the surface of things, there are yet deep layerings and extensions to our everyday selves. Each being is like a ten-thousand armed, multi-faced, multi-faceted deity, such as those depicted in Indian temple statues and Tibetan thanka cloths. We extend outward across the fields of nature, manipulating and weaving energies in a myriad of realms.

Equally important, Mirante has now taken on the editorial direction of ayahuasca.com, the seminal ayahuasca website, which he is redesigning as a research project devoted to the botany, ethnography, mythology, arts, music, therapeutic mechanisms, and phenomenology of ayahuasca. Check it out.