In 1911, a French coal miner named Augustin Lesage claimed he heard a voice while working at the bottom of a mine shaft. The voice said:
“One day, you will be a painter.”
Lesage was 35 years old and had never touched a paint brush in his life.
A year later he attended a séance during the rise of Spiritualism in northern France and started producing automatic drawings while in a trance state. After that, he claimed the voices came back regularly and began instructing him how to paint. Which brushes to buy, which colors to use, even what size canvas to order.
Lesage went on to create massive symmetrical paintings filled with geometric structures, faces, temples, and patterns that looked completely disconnected from anything a coal miner with no art training should have been capable of producing.
Some of the paintings were so large he couldn’t even see the full composition while working on them. He painted them section by section over years, yet the finished pieces came together with almost impossible precision.
Researchers later observed him paint under controlled conditions trying to figure out what was happening. Lesage’s explanation never changed:
“The spirits told me what to do and I did it.”
He died leaving behind more than 800 paintings, and the mystery of who was guiding his hands.
by rileythelostboy