The Art of Louis Wain

Gesturing toward a series of concurrent watercolor landscapes, lucid with detail and totally devoid of felines, Wain had reached a sort of psychic euphoria at the end of his lifetime—and that these detailed landscapes, along with the trippy cats, indicate that Wain had achieved a permanent state of higher consciousness resembling what the rest of us see at the peak of LSD. Cosmic and strange, yet peaceful and serene, they represent a kind of oneness with all. “Wain wasn’t suffering,” he concludes. “It was pure cosmic contentedness.”