A Color Between Worlds
Violet is a color of thresholds. Suspended between the cool serenity of blue and the fiery intensity of red, it has long been associated with the liminal and the unseen. Unlike primary colors that assert themselves with clarity, violet seems to hover, shifting with light and perception. This elusive quality has made it a favored shade for mysticism, transcendence, and the spiritual unknown.
To encounter violet is to encounter ambiguity—yet also revelation. It is a color that resists closure, inviting viewers into a realm of meditation and mystery.
Byzantine Radiance
In Byzantine art, violet appeared in mosaics, frescoes, and textiles as a hue of divine majesty. Alongside gold tesserae, it shimmered as a color of sanctity, not quite of this world. Purple dyes, painstakingly extracted from murex shells, were reserved for emperors and sacred vestments.
See my violet floral art poster "VASE"
Within this context, violet was not merely decorative; it was theological. It signaled the presence of transcendence, a color that mediated between earthly perception and divine radiance. To gaze upon violet in Byzantine mosaics was to glimpse eternity refracted in stone and glass.
Mystical Associations Across Cultures
Beyond Byzantium, violet found resonance in other traditions. In Western mysticism, it was linked to penance, humility, and the divine mystery. In Eastern philosophies, violet or purple hues were associated with higher states of consciousness, often aligned with the crown chakra—the seat of spiritual awakening.
See my spiritual art poster "SUN"
In literature, violet often surfaces as a flower of memory and fragility, yet tinged with metaphysical depth. From Shakespeare’s “forward violet” to Proust’s perfumes, violet carries a lingering, ephemeral spirituality, never fully captured yet impossible to dismiss.
Modern Abstraction and the Unseen
With the rise of modern abstraction, violet gained new spiritual dimensions. Wassily Kandinsky, who believed colors carried inherent vibrations of the soul, saw violet as introspective, a retreat from the world into inner depths. Mark Rothko’s vast violet and purple canvases envelop viewers in meditative silence, their expanses suggesting the infinite.
In contemporary symbolic wall art, violet often functions as a portal. A surreal portrait tinged with violet may suggest a body caught between worlds; botanical forms rendered in violet acquire a spectral, dreamlike aura. It is a color that softens reality, opening space for contemplation of what lies beyond.
The Unseen Dimension
What makes violet mystical is its resistance to being pinned down. It is a spectral edge—the highest visible wavelength before light disappears into ultraviolet, beyond human sight. Violet thus embodies the threshold between what can be seen and what cannot, between the material and the immaterial.
See my mystical portrait art poster "MARIA"
This liminal status explains its spiritual magnetism. To live with violet in art is to live with a reminder of mystery: that not all truths are visible, that transcendence is always just beyond reach.
A Color of Transcendence
From Byzantine mosaics to modern prints, violet has been a constant symbol of mysticism and transcendence. It is not a color of clarity but of suggestion, not of boundaries but of openings.
In symbolic posters and contemporary wall art, violet continues to whisper of the unseen. It invites viewers not into certainty, but into meditation—into the recognition that beauty often lies in what cannot be fully grasped.
Violet endures as the color of thresholds, a hue that carries us from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to the infinite.
