Hattie Hambridge explores the Spirit House in words and pictures.

Halfway up a busy Brighton street, I encounter what can only be the doorway into Jim Sanders’ Spirit House, painted with Aztec faces, and symbols fashioned with large loose strokes. Entering Jim’s live-in-studio is like being pulled into a kind of underworld. The dark hallway is covered with masks and sculptures hanging from the ceiling and walls. These are made from collected animal skulls adorned and bejewelled with bones, shells and tassels painted in vibrant red, and black. Every wall is covered with layers of hanging veils representing portals into the subconscious.

The back wall in the kitchen is completely covered with shrines, small wooden altars, feathers of a buzzard, beads, crucifixes resting in the centre. Through the kitchen and into the small south-facing yard, where Jim tells me he makes most of his work, I am greeted by the grinning skull of a horse perched upon a lamp stand.

Jim’s Catholic background is evident throughout his work, met with later influences of paganism that now dominate his practice. His rituals involve honouring the change in seasons and spending days in surrounding woods, connecting with nature and making art from this experience. It’s hard not to feel pulled back to an earlier time when you visit Jim’s house, the masks on the walls feel primal, acting as storytellers of the lore of folk past. Drawings of mythical beings are everywhere, their absurd expressions dreamlike and surreal.

Jim tells me he signs everything off with ‘sans Jim Sanders’. Sans meaning without. We talk about creating as a kind of consciousness, without ego, the artist as a vessel through which the message is sent. An automotive approach is evident in his work, asemic writing and endlessly reworked drawings reveal his instinctual approach. Jim is a collector, a forager, scouring the shores of Brighton and the woods inland. The woods are a place he constantly returns to, for inspiration and connection, and to feel the sense of wonder nature offers.

For the past five years Jim has periodically opened his Spirit House up to the public, as an immersive experience of his dreamlike realm. The space has clearly been a nest for creativity, collaboration and connection, hosting parties and cramming six-piece bands into tightly packed rooms. This year, during Brighton’s festival season in May, Jim transported a selection of his artworks to the Spirit Temple, a newly built space situated in the Avant Garden in Brighton.

Jim’s home is an ever-evolving immersive space, a living and fluctuating work of art that acts as a shrine to art-making as ritual. It is a folkloric sanctum that draws in ideas and community, transporting its inhabitants to somewhere deep within our primordial psyche.

The Spirit House is presently undergoing renovations and will be open again for events later in the year. @sansjimsanders