Featured image: Visions of Hildegard #10, Christopher Hynes, 2025, mixed media, 12 x 12 in. / 30.48 x 30.48 cm.
Christopher Hynes’ works explore the orb as a visual and spiritual structure, an image that condenses cosmology, inner vision, and meditative focus into a single form.Â
Christopher Hynes is a contemporary mixed-media artist whose work explores color, energy, and spiritual perception through orb-based compositions and layered surfaces.
Drawing inspiration from the writings and visions of Hildegard of Bingen, Hynes uses layered color, pigmented plaster, and circular geometry to evoke states of perception rather than depict literal scenes. Life Force 1, Vision of Hildegard #12, and Vision of Hildegard #6 operate as contemplative fields, inviting the viewer to slow down and encounter color as energy, substance, and spiritual language.
Life Force 1, Christopher Hynes, 2025, mixed media, 24 x 24 in. / 60.96 x 60.96 cm.
Life Force 1 anchors the series with a large, centered orb suspended within a pale, radiating field. The circular form appears planetary, its mottled greens, whites, and grays suggesting organic matter in flux. Subtle concentric marks extend outward, reinforcing the idea of energy emanation rather than containment. The mixed-media surface reveals accumulated gestures, giving the orb a sense of depth and internal motion. Rather than symbolizing a specific body, the form functions as a locus of vitality, an abstracted life force that resonates with Hildegard’s cosmological visions, where divine energy circulates through all living systems.
Vision of Hildegard #12, Christopher Hynes, 2025, mixed media, 12 x 12 in. / 30.48 x 30.48 cm.
In Vision of Hildegard #12, Hynes intensifies contrast and structure. A luminous yellow orb sits at the center of a dark blue field, intersected by a gold cross-like geometry. The pigmented plaster surface is dense and tactile, emphasizing material presence alongside symbolic clarity. Gold accents introduce a sacred register, recalling illuminated manuscripts and ecclesiastical iconography without replicating them. The composition suggests orientation, four directions converging on a central vision, positioning the orb as both source and axis. Here, color operates not decoratively but hierarchically, guiding the viewer’s focus inward.
Vision of Hildegard #6, Christopher Hynes, 2025, mixed media, 12 x 12 in. / 30.48 x 30.48 cm.
Vision of Hildegard #6 softens the language of structure, presenting a vibrant, multicolored orb against a textured, painterly ground. Blues, greens, and yellows intermingle within the circle, creating a sense of atmospheric depth and fluidity. Delicate white botanical motifs emerge at the lower edges, subtly grounding the cosmic form in earthly life. The plaster surface retains evidence of layering and revision, reinforcing the idea of vision as something built over time. This work bridges the celestial and the organic, aligning spiritual insight with growth, ecology, and embodied experience.
Across these works, Christopher Hynes uses the orb as a disciplined yet expansive framework for meditation. Color becomes energy, surface becomes duration, and form becomes a threshold between inner vision and shared experience. Referencing Hildegard of Bingen without illustration or narrative, Hynes translates mystical thought into a contemporary visual language, one that prioritizes attention, stillness, and perceptual depth. Together, these paintings function not as images to be decoded, but as spaces to be entered.