Denita M Benyshek, PhD MFA MA LMHC
Dr. Benyshek is a professional multi-media artist, a cross-disciplinary scholar, initiated shaman, and devoted healer working as a mental health counselor with gifted, talented adults and teens.
Denita's paintings were shown in over 20 solo exhibits and over 60 juried, national and international exhibits including Redefining Visionary Art in New York City. Her artwork is in the permanent collection of the Glasmuseet (Glass Museum) in Ebertoft, Denmark, the King County Cultural Heritage Collection, Harborview Medical Center, and University of Washington Medical Center. The University of Northern Iowa, McPherson College, and Wichita State University commissioned multi-media performance artworks from Denita. She received grants from the Ucross Foundation and the Alfred G. and Elma M. Milotte Foundation, plus numerous scholarships for art and psychology, most recently from Creativity and Madness Conference, Santa Fe, NM. Denita also worked on several films, such as Disney’s Chips the War Dog, and as a scenic artist for major national theatres such as the Seattle Repertory Theatre and Intiman Theatre. In 2018, Dr. Benyshek was invited to join the World Congress of Dance Research of International Dance Council CID at UNESCO.
As a clinician, Denita provides psychotherapy and coaching to intellectually gifted, creative, artistic teens and adults who are healers, social change agents, and leaders, from many ethnicities, religions, careers, and genders. She uses shamanic counseling, EMDR, sand tray, polyvagal theory, humanistic/existential, and Rogerian/person-centered techniques. Dr. Benyshek uses a strength-based creative process to assist people in successful life transitions that supports ongoing creativity, loving relationships, and fulfilling careers, towards ongoing self-actualization and social change.
Dr. Benyshek contributed to her community by organizing the first Northwest Women Artists Lecture Series to provide balance to college art history courses that did not include artists who are women; creating artwork for a view point park in the mountains to promote wilderness conservation; serving as a grant juror for arts in education programs with the Seattle Arts Commission and King County Arts Commission; directing a nonprofit organization serving adult artists with severe disabilities; teaching mural painting in the Washington State Reformatory; and, directing radio plays for a closed circuit station serving individuals with visual disabilities. An anthology of writing about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, entitled Season of Dead Water, included her interviews with bird and animal rescue workers.
For 15 years, Dr. Benyshek taught art, dance, performance, and theatre in the remote Native American villages in Alaska. She also taught visual arts and performance art at the University of Alaska, drawing, painting, art history, and introduction to art at North Seattle Community College, and visual arts at the Pskov College of Folk Arts and Culture in Russia. Teaching is one of her favorite creative endeavors and a lifelong passion.
Prior education: BFA, Magna cum Laude with departmental honors, from Wichita State University, an MFA degree from the University of Washington, plus MA in psychology, graduate certificate in creativity studies, and PhD in psychology from Saybrook Graduate School. In addition, Dr. Benyshek studied several styles of dance (ballet, jazz, and modern), plus theatre directing, acting, and improvisation. She also studied Jungian Psychology at the Carl Jung Society in Seattle, glass engraving at the Pilchuck Glass School (full scholarship), jazz and blues vocals. She enjoys singing at jams with live musicians.
Dr. Benyshek’s theoretical research integrates art and psychology, focusing on the cross-cultural healing practices of traditional shamans and how some contemporary artists integrate these healing processes into their work. In addition, she is studying the creative process of the art audience as a contemporary shamanic community. These two topics are the focus of the book she is currently writing. Denita presented her research at conferences of the International Society of Shamanistic Researchers (2009 in Fairbanks, AK; 2011 in Warsaw, Poland) as well as the 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2017 conferences on Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing, San Rafael, CA. She recently completed a chapter for an upcoming anthology on science, spirituality, and the arts.
.
In 2018, Dr. Benyshek was initiated as a shaman by traditional Korean mudang Kim Junghee.
Supervisors: Ruth Richards, MD, PhD, dissertation chair, Stanley Krippner, PhD, and Art Bohart, PhD
Denita's paintings were shown in over 20 solo exhibits and over 60 juried, national and international exhibits including Redefining Visionary Art in New York City. Her artwork is in the permanent collection of the Glasmuseet (Glass Museum) in Ebertoft, Denmark, the King County Cultural Heritage Collection, Harborview Medical Center, and University of Washington Medical Center. The University of Northern Iowa, McPherson College, and Wichita State University commissioned multi-media performance artworks from Denita. She received grants from the Ucross Foundation and the Alfred G. and Elma M. Milotte Foundation, plus numerous scholarships for art and psychology, most recently from Creativity and Madness Conference, Santa Fe, NM. Denita also worked on several films, such as Disney’s Chips the War Dog, and as a scenic artist for major national theatres such as the Seattle Repertory Theatre and Intiman Theatre. In 2018, Dr. Benyshek was invited to join the World Congress of Dance Research of International Dance Council CID at UNESCO.
As a clinician, Denita provides psychotherapy and coaching to intellectually gifted, creative, artistic teens and adults who are healers, social change agents, and leaders, from many ethnicities, religions, careers, and genders. She uses shamanic counseling, EMDR, sand tray, polyvagal theory, humanistic/existential, and Rogerian/person-centered techniques. Dr. Benyshek uses a strength-based creative process to assist people in successful life transitions that supports ongoing creativity, loving relationships, and fulfilling careers, towards ongoing self-actualization and social change.
Dr. Benyshek contributed to her community by organizing the first Northwest Women Artists Lecture Series to provide balance to college art history courses that did not include artists who are women; creating artwork for a view point park in the mountains to promote wilderness conservation; serving as a grant juror for arts in education programs with the Seattle Arts Commission and King County Arts Commission; directing a nonprofit organization serving adult artists with severe disabilities; teaching mural painting in the Washington State Reformatory; and, directing radio plays for a closed circuit station serving individuals with visual disabilities. An anthology of writing about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, entitled Season of Dead Water, included her interviews with bird and animal rescue workers.
For 15 years, Dr. Benyshek taught art, dance, performance, and theatre in the remote Native American villages in Alaska. She also taught visual arts and performance art at the University of Alaska, drawing, painting, art history, and introduction to art at North Seattle Community College, and visual arts at the Pskov College of Folk Arts and Culture in Russia. Teaching is one of her favorite creative endeavors and a lifelong passion.
Prior education: BFA, Magna cum Laude with departmental honors, from Wichita State University, an MFA degree from the University of Washington, plus MA in psychology, graduate certificate in creativity studies, and PhD in psychology from Saybrook Graduate School. In addition, Dr. Benyshek studied several styles of dance (ballet, jazz, and modern), plus theatre directing, acting, and improvisation. She also studied Jungian Psychology at the Carl Jung Society in Seattle, glass engraving at the Pilchuck Glass School (full scholarship), jazz and blues vocals. She enjoys singing at jams with live musicians.
Dr. Benyshek’s theoretical research integrates art and psychology, focusing on the cross-cultural healing practices of traditional shamans and how some contemporary artists integrate these healing processes into their work. In addition, she is studying the creative process of the art audience as a contemporary shamanic community. These two topics are the focus of the book she is currently writing. Denita presented her research at conferences of the International Society of Shamanistic Researchers (2009 in Fairbanks, AK; 2011 in Warsaw, Poland) as well as the 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2017 conferences on Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing, San Rafael, CA. She recently completed a chapter for an upcoming anthology on science, spirituality, and the arts.
.
In 2018, Dr. Benyshek was initiated as a shaman by traditional Korean mudang Kim Junghee.
Supervisors: Ruth Richards, MD, PhD, dissertation chair, Stanley Krippner, PhD, and Art Bohart, PhD
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Papers by Denita M Benyshek, PhD MFA MA LMHC
There are many studies showing positive effects result from art engagement. During receipt of benefits from spiritual, healing art, art audiences are partly functioning as shamanistic (shamanlike) communities. A contemporary audience might not label individual artists as shamans. Nonetheless, when an art audience receives benefits from a work of art, the work’s artist is implicitly designated as a shaman.
When an individual is engaged with art (as an artist, member of the audience, or collector), art can evoke memories, make new connections, heighten awareness, discharge repressed emotions, halt patterns of repression, lead to self-discovery, create empathy with individuals or cultures, remind society of social ills needing attention, and lead to individual and societal healing.
Social stressors and symptoms of stress, loss, grief, and post-traumatic stress disorder are considered, while adaptations of individuals, couples, families, and communities demonstrated everyday creativity that resulted in personal growth, strengthened relationships, heightened resilience, and contributed to needed social change.
The author provides an insider view of events from March through June, 2020, using creative nonfiction and arts-based inquiry, towards illuminating the experience of this time to offer validation, meaning, inspiration, hope, and connection to contemporary readers as well as information for future researchers in the social sciences.
Keywords: coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic, Seattle, King County, police brutality, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, BLM, post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma, PTSD, grief, protest art, dance, hedonometer, journaling, everyday creativity, resilience, social justice, change, creative nonfiction, arts-based inquiry.
Benyshek, D.M. (2015). The contemporary artist as shaman. ReVision, vol. 32, nos. 2&3, 54-60.
Stanley Krippner (personal communication, January 12, 2010) provided the initial definition of a shaman that, after minor modifications to more fully represent knowledge about shamans, became: A shaman is a socially designated spiritual practitioner who obtains information in ways not available to the shaman’s community through the voluntary regulation of the shaman’s own attention, which is used for the benefit of the shaman’s community and its members. Defining constructs were operationalized and validated cross-culturally to support multidirectional comparisons between artists and shamans using archival data from psychology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, art history, and creativity studies.
Previous publications about 24 well-known artists provided archival data for comparisons with shamans. The dimensions explored included familial influence, talent, neurological functions, calling to vocation, social support, personality, training, initiation, inspiration, positive disintegration, transliminality, imaginal realms, altered states, purported psi experiences, mental health issues, soul retrieval, spiritual emergence, transpersonal orientation, intent to benefit, and creativity. Tables, charts, and diagrams organized archival information that, supported by descriptive comparisons, explored the nature and extent of similarities between artists and shamans. The integration of visual art, poetry, and stories provided an emic artist’s perspective and alternate ways of knowing for the reader.
The study found that four artists from traditional cultures fulfilled all defining constructs of shaman, comprising a set of prototypical shamanic artists. In contrast, twenty artists fulfilled some, but not all, constructs defining shaman. These shamanlike artists were noncentral members in a fuzzy set where the shamanlike artists had family resemblances to traditional shamans and shamanic artists.
The study identified and articulated gaps in knowledge as well as establishing a broad, well-grounded theoretical model that can serve as a foundation for future research on relationships between contemporary artists and shamans, and, potentially, contribute towards transformation of art experiences in artists, art audiences, and art institutions.
The shamanic-ecstatic hypothesis for the Alpine rock art of Valcomonica, Umberto Sansoni.
Sensuous visions: Encountering the shamanistic rock art of the Bayan Jurek Mountains, Kazakhstan, Kenneth Lymer.
Depictions in Sami rock art of the Mother Earth figure, Inga-Maria Mulk.
Argimpasa - Scythia goddess, patroness of shamans, Zaur Hasanov.
The bear and the plough: Shamanism in the Neolithic, Giovanni Kezich.
From shamanic rituals to theatre and cultural industry: The state, shamanism and gender among the Kavalan (Taiwan), Pi-Chen Liu.
Mongolian shamanism envisaged, embodied, Eva Jane Neumann Fridman.
Women shamans and their portrayal in the Olonkho Sakha epic poems, Lia Zola.
The poetics of healing: Shamanic rituals in Central Nepal, Dagmar Eigner.
Inadvertent art. Icons, music and dance in Chepang (Nepal) and Semang-Negrito (Peninsular Malaysia) shamanism, Diana Riboli.
Artistic expressions of the visual language on Sami ritual drums, Hee Sook Lee-Niinioja.
The ritual art and paraphernalia of the Nepalese jhankris and Tamang bombo, Vesa Matteo Piludu.
Artists as shamans: Historical review and recent theoretical model, Denita Benyshek.
Perspectives on the arts of Parbati, Barbara Wilhelmi.
Shamanic artistry in a French Absurdist play, Daniel A. Kister.
The shamanic works of Minsalim Timergazeev and other artists of the First International Woodcarving Festival of Uvat, Carla Corradi Musi.
Norval Morrisseau - Shaman-Artist, Jurgen Werner Kremer.
The hand on the wall of the cave. Exploring connections between shamanism and the visual arts, Susan Michaelson.
Artist as shaman, Gilah Yelin Hirsch.
Edited by Elvira Eevr Djaltchinova-Malec. Published by Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary, Polish Institute of World Art Studies, Warsaw, and Tako Publishing House, Toruń, Poland.
This book can be ordered by mail:
Polish Institute of World Art Studies: [email protected]
Tako Publishing House: [email protected]
In artists with family resemblances to shamans, the most distinguishing feature was the creation of art to provide benefits to individuals and society. What benefits might audiences receive from engagement with arts?
Beneficial creative processes that offered healing features involved redirected attention, suspension of disbelief, empathy with key characters, loosening of conventions, awareness of dysfunction, catharsis, positive disintegration, improved physical health, enhanced social interactions, new dialogues with self, insight, discovery of alternative perspectives, peak experience, integration, closure, and positive growth. Collective responses also contributed to social change. Some examples are given.
Martha Graham’s dance, Lamentation, benefitted a woman in the audience. She released repressed emotions and began grieving for a deceased son, feeling her experience of loss was honored by the dance. In a visual artwork, George Longfish presented images of genocide, past and present, historic and symbolic. In response, one Native American viewer felt recognized, understood, honored, and healed.
The social-problem genre of literature, including authors Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, and Toni Morrison, helped end slavery, garnered support for civil rights, and improved multicultural understanding, contributing to political change and positive social growth.
Such intentions and outcomes can inspire arts-engaged individuals, communities, and institutions. We researchers can help by clarifying creative processes that can enhance audience healing, resiliency and positive change. And we can honor artists, and qualities of such artists, who have chosen to pursue this socially beneficial path.
Stanley Krippner (personal communication, January 12, 2010) provided the initial definition of a shaman that, after minor modifications to more fully represent knowledge about shamans, became: A shaman is a socially designated spiritual practitioner who obtains information in ways not available to the shaman’s community through the voluntary regulation of the shaman’s own attention, which is used for the benefit of the shaman’s community and its members. Defining constructs were operationalized and validated cross-culturally to support multidirectional comparisons between artists and shamans using archival data from psychology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, art history, and creativity studies.
Previous publications about 24 well-known artists provided archival data for comparisons with shamans. The dimensions explored included familial influence, talent, neurological functions, calling to vocation, social support, personality, training, initiation, inspiration, positive disintegration, transliminality, imaginal realms, altered states, purported psi experiences, mental health issues, soul retrieval, spiritual emergence, transpersonal orientation, intent to benefit, and creativity. Tables, charts, and diagrams organized archival information that, supported by descriptive comparisons, explored the nature and extent of similarities between artists and shamans. The integration of visual art, poetry, and stories provided an emic artist’s perspective and alternate ways of knowing for the reader.
The study found that four artists from traditional cultures fulfilled all defining constructs of shaman, comprising a set of prototypical shamanic artists. In contrast, twenty artists fulfilled some, but not all, constructs defining shaman. These shamanlike artists were noncentral members in a fuzzy set where the shamanlike artists had family resemblances to traditional shamans and shamanic artists.
The study identified and articulated gaps in knowledge as well as establishing a broad, well-grounded theoretical model that can serve as a foundation for future research on relationships between contemporary artists and shamans, and, potentially, contribute towards transformation of art experiences in artists, art audiences, and art institutions.
Abstract: A historical overview follows the association of artists with shamans through myth, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, iconography, art history, psychology, and studies of creativity, primarily through the lens of the West. Forms of proto-art, such as the Woman of Willendorf, might represent entheogenmorphic female shamans.
A theoretical model of contemporary artists as shamans is presented. Several traditional shamanic artists served as socially recognized shamans, spiritual practitioners who voluntarily controlled their attention to obtain information presented as forms of art. Shamanlike artists fulfilled many properties of shamanism, possibly earning implicit social designation when audiences receive psychological, social, spiritual, or physiological benefits from art.
"
Talks by Denita M Benyshek, PhD MFA MA LMHC
There are many studies showing positive effects result from art engagement. During receipt of benefits from spiritual, healing art, art audiences are partly functioning as shamanistic (shamanlike) communities. A contemporary audience might not label individual artists as shamans. Nonetheless, when an art audience receives benefits from a work of art, the work’s artist is implicitly designated as a shaman.
When an individual is engaged with art (as an artist, member of the audience, or collector), art can evoke memories, make new connections, heighten awareness, discharge repressed emotions, halt patterns of repression, lead to self-discovery, create empathy with individuals or cultures, remind society of social ills needing attention, and lead to individual and societal healing.
Social stressors and symptoms of stress, loss, grief, and post-traumatic stress disorder are considered, while adaptations of individuals, couples, families, and communities demonstrated everyday creativity that resulted in personal growth, strengthened relationships, heightened resilience, and contributed to needed social change.
The author provides an insider view of events from March through June, 2020, using creative nonfiction and arts-based inquiry, towards illuminating the experience of this time to offer validation, meaning, inspiration, hope, and connection to contemporary readers as well as information for future researchers in the social sciences.
Keywords: coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic, Seattle, King County, police brutality, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, BLM, post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma, PTSD, grief, protest art, dance, hedonometer, journaling, everyday creativity, resilience, social justice, change, creative nonfiction, arts-based inquiry.
Benyshek, D.M. (2015). The contemporary artist as shaman. ReVision, vol. 32, nos. 2&3, 54-60.
Stanley Krippner (personal communication, January 12, 2010) provided the initial definition of a shaman that, after minor modifications to more fully represent knowledge about shamans, became: A shaman is a socially designated spiritual practitioner who obtains information in ways not available to the shaman’s community through the voluntary regulation of the shaman’s own attention, which is used for the benefit of the shaman’s community and its members. Defining constructs were operationalized and validated cross-culturally to support multidirectional comparisons between artists and shamans using archival data from psychology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, art history, and creativity studies.
Previous publications about 24 well-known artists provided archival data for comparisons with shamans. The dimensions explored included familial influence, talent, neurological functions, calling to vocation, social support, personality, training, initiation, inspiration, positive disintegration, transliminality, imaginal realms, altered states, purported psi experiences, mental health issues, soul retrieval, spiritual emergence, transpersonal orientation, intent to benefit, and creativity. Tables, charts, and diagrams organized archival information that, supported by descriptive comparisons, explored the nature and extent of similarities between artists and shamans. The integration of visual art, poetry, and stories provided an emic artist’s perspective and alternate ways of knowing for the reader.
The study found that four artists from traditional cultures fulfilled all defining constructs of shaman, comprising a set of prototypical shamanic artists. In contrast, twenty artists fulfilled some, but not all, constructs defining shaman. These shamanlike artists were noncentral members in a fuzzy set where the shamanlike artists had family resemblances to traditional shamans and shamanic artists.
The study identified and articulated gaps in knowledge as well as establishing a broad, well-grounded theoretical model that can serve as a foundation for future research on relationships between contemporary artists and shamans, and, potentially, contribute towards transformation of art experiences in artists, art audiences, and art institutions.
The shamanic-ecstatic hypothesis for the Alpine rock art of Valcomonica, Umberto Sansoni.
Sensuous visions: Encountering the shamanistic rock art of the Bayan Jurek Mountains, Kazakhstan, Kenneth Lymer.
Depictions in Sami rock art of the Mother Earth figure, Inga-Maria Mulk.
Argimpasa - Scythia goddess, patroness of shamans, Zaur Hasanov.
The bear and the plough: Shamanism in the Neolithic, Giovanni Kezich.
From shamanic rituals to theatre and cultural industry: The state, shamanism and gender among the Kavalan (Taiwan), Pi-Chen Liu.
Mongolian shamanism envisaged, embodied, Eva Jane Neumann Fridman.
Women shamans and their portrayal in the Olonkho Sakha epic poems, Lia Zola.
The poetics of healing: Shamanic rituals in Central Nepal, Dagmar Eigner.
Inadvertent art. Icons, music and dance in Chepang (Nepal) and Semang-Negrito (Peninsular Malaysia) shamanism, Diana Riboli.
Artistic expressions of the visual language on Sami ritual drums, Hee Sook Lee-Niinioja.
The ritual art and paraphernalia of the Nepalese jhankris and Tamang bombo, Vesa Matteo Piludu.
Artists as shamans: Historical review and recent theoretical model, Denita Benyshek.
Perspectives on the arts of Parbati, Barbara Wilhelmi.
Shamanic artistry in a French Absurdist play, Daniel A. Kister.
The shamanic works of Minsalim Timergazeev and other artists of the First International Woodcarving Festival of Uvat, Carla Corradi Musi.
Norval Morrisseau - Shaman-Artist, Jurgen Werner Kremer.
The hand on the wall of the cave. Exploring connections between shamanism and the visual arts, Susan Michaelson.
Artist as shaman, Gilah Yelin Hirsch.
Edited by Elvira Eevr Djaltchinova-Malec. Published by Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary, Polish Institute of World Art Studies, Warsaw, and Tako Publishing House, Toruń, Poland.
This book can be ordered by mail:
Polish Institute of World Art Studies: [email protected]
Tako Publishing House: [email protected]
In artists with family resemblances to shamans, the most distinguishing feature was the creation of art to provide benefits to individuals and society. What benefits might audiences receive from engagement with arts?
Beneficial creative processes that offered healing features involved redirected attention, suspension of disbelief, empathy with key characters, loosening of conventions, awareness of dysfunction, catharsis, positive disintegration, improved physical health, enhanced social interactions, new dialogues with self, insight, discovery of alternative perspectives, peak experience, integration, closure, and positive growth. Collective responses also contributed to social change. Some examples are given.
Martha Graham’s dance, Lamentation, benefitted a woman in the audience. She released repressed emotions and began grieving for a deceased son, feeling her experience of loss was honored by the dance. In a visual artwork, George Longfish presented images of genocide, past and present, historic and symbolic. In response, one Native American viewer felt recognized, understood, honored, and healed.
The social-problem genre of literature, including authors Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, and Toni Morrison, helped end slavery, garnered support for civil rights, and improved multicultural understanding, contributing to political change and positive social growth.
Such intentions and outcomes can inspire arts-engaged individuals, communities, and institutions. We researchers can help by clarifying creative processes that can enhance audience healing, resiliency and positive change. And we can honor artists, and qualities of such artists, who have chosen to pursue this socially beneficial path.
Stanley Krippner (personal communication, January 12, 2010) provided the initial definition of a shaman that, after minor modifications to more fully represent knowledge about shamans, became: A shaman is a socially designated spiritual practitioner who obtains information in ways not available to the shaman’s community through the voluntary regulation of the shaman’s own attention, which is used for the benefit of the shaman’s community and its members. Defining constructs were operationalized and validated cross-culturally to support multidirectional comparisons between artists and shamans using archival data from psychology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, art history, and creativity studies.
Previous publications about 24 well-known artists provided archival data for comparisons with shamans. The dimensions explored included familial influence, talent, neurological functions, calling to vocation, social support, personality, training, initiation, inspiration, positive disintegration, transliminality, imaginal realms, altered states, purported psi experiences, mental health issues, soul retrieval, spiritual emergence, transpersonal orientation, intent to benefit, and creativity. Tables, charts, and diagrams organized archival information that, supported by descriptive comparisons, explored the nature and extent of similarities between artists and shamans. The integration of visual art, poetry, and stories provided an emic artist’s perspective and alternate ways of knowing for the reader.
The study found that four artists from traditional cultures fulfilled all defining constructs of shaman, comprising a set of prototypical shamanic artists. In contrast, twenty artists fulfilled some, but not all, constructs defining shaman. These shamanlike artists were noncentral members in a fuzzy set where the shamanlike artists had family resemblances to traditional shamans and shamanic artists.
The study identified and articulated gaps in knowledge as well as establishing a broad, well-grounded theoretical model that can serve as a foundation for future research on relationships between contemporary artists and shamans, and, potentially, contribute towards transformation of art experiences in artists, art audiences, and art institutions.
Abstract: A historical overview follows the association of artists with shamans through myth, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, iconography, art history, psychology, and studies of creativity, primarily through the lens of the West. Forms of proto-art, such as the Woman of Willendorf, might represent entheogenmorphic female shamans.
A theoretical model of contemporary artists as shamans is presented. Several traditional shamanic artists served as socially recognized shamans, spiritual practitioners who voluntarily controlled their attention to obtain information presented as forms of art. Shamanlike artists fulfilled many properties of shamanism, possibly earning implicit social designation when audiences receive psychological, social, spiritual, or physiological benefits from art.
"
Key words: Czech heritage, Russia, Pskov, magic realism, transpersonal psychology, shaman, shamanism, heightened color, nonlinear time, reverie, discontinuous space, intuition, transcendent, beauty, Wichita, Kansas, KS, animism, folk art, shamanic creativity, Wichita State University, University of Washington, Saybrook University, Pilchuck Glass School, MARK Arts.