TOBI ZAUSNER, Ph.D.

www.tobizausner.com

PAINTING AS A JOURNEY OF INQUIRY

A speech and slide presentation for Division 10, Psychology and the Arts

Presented at the 107th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, August, 1999 in Boston

PAINTING AS A JOURNEY OF INQUIRY

Good afternoon everyone. Today, I will be speaking to you about my painting. The handouts for this speech are picture postcards printed with my work, which I have placed in front of the room and which include an image of the painting you now see.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - QUANAH II, oil on canvas, 60"x45”

Tobi Zausner - QUANAH II, oil on canvas, 60"x45”

It is generally agreed that creativity is a mirror of the mind but I believe that it functions as a mirror for the mind as well. Art makes expression visible, and this is true not only for the artist, but also for the viewer. Marcel Duchamp believed that art exists fifty percent in the mind of the artist and fifty percent with the audience, and so I look forward to sharing some of my work with you today.

The painting now shown is an image of the great Native American chief Quanah Parker. I have made him standing on the earth with his moccasin laces spread out like the roots of a tree, solidly grounded. Yet his mind soars into the clouds, as does the hawk in the sky. I found out later he was called the Eagle of the Commanches. The painting was inspired by an old and damaged black and white photo I saw of him standing in front of a teepee. I have changed it considerably as I do with all the photos I use. Often, I just look at the photo in the beginning of a work, and then seldom reference it, painting mostly from my mind.

Quanah Parker, who was born about 1850, became the last great Chief of the Commanches. (http://www.lnstar.com/mall/texasinfo/quanah.htm) His name indicates his mixed ancestry of Native American and European origins. Quanah, means “fragrant” in the Commanche language and his second name, Parker, comes from his mother Cynthia Ann Parker, a white woman who was captured as a child during an 1836 Indian raid on Parker's Fort in Texas. She grew up in the Commanche tribe, married a Chief, Peta Nocona, and had two children, Quanah and his sister, Prairie Flower.

After many raids on the Indians, Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured in 1860 with her daughter during a raid in northwest Texas. I had read somewhere that her brother had become a U.S. senator and that it was used as an added excuse for the multiple raids. They said they had to rescue Senator Robert Parker’s sister. But after twenty-four years with the Commanches, Cynthia Parker was unable to readjust to white civilization. She suffered an emotional crisis and died shortly after the death of her young daughter.

Her son, who remained with the tribe, became a great Commanche warrior and Chief. Quanah Parker never lost a single battle to the white settlers nor did the Army ever take him captive. Eventually, when he realized that there was no alternative, he led his tribe onto a reservation and adopted a policy of assimilation. Quanah Parker learned English and lobbied Congress on behalf of the rights of the Commanches. He negotiated grazing lands with cattlemen, became a reservation judge, and an investor in a railroad. He was also a friend of Theodore Roosevelt.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - TRAVELOGUES II, oil on canvas, 56"x48”

Tobi Zausner - TRAVELOGUES II, oil on canvas, 56"x48”

This painting was inspired by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which says that in certain instances time can curve and even form a loop. At intersection of the loop, it would be theoretically possible to meet yourself at another point in time. How would one appear to oneself, as a ghostly image, and a shock - who knows? Other people have looked at this work and have had different responses. Some said I painted a doppelganger, or a double. Other people, in times of loss or crisis, have sat in front of this work and found solace. That pleases me beyond words, to have helped someone with my art.

Since the age of three or three and a half, I have made art and it has been central to my life. When I was seven and my teacher called me an “artist,” it was a moment of epiphany, a realization of my place in the world. Art is so important to me that when I am not painting, I dream about making art the way a hungry person dreams about food. Since my late twenties, I have been a professional exhibiting artist and yet with all its prominence, art has never been my only focus. All my life, I have had another passion, that of the mind. I have tried to combine the two in my painting as a pattern of art and intellect, and also in my field of research, which is psychology of art.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner –THE STRENGTH OF MEMORY, oil on canvas diptych, 104"x72", each panel is 52"x72"

Tobi Zausner –THE STRENGTH OF MEMORY, oil on canvas diptych,

104"x72", each panel is 52"x72"

Here is another work that deals with time theory. The title of my talk is Painting as a Journey of Inquiry because that how my work appears to me. Sometimes my work literally shows a journey as it does here. The repetition of the figures expresses my ideas about time. Since childhood, I have read mythology and have always felt comfortable with its idea of Great Time, the planar time of the Gods where all events are known and available. I believe that time is not only the unidirectional linearity that it appears to our waking consciousness, but exists with varying access in multiple dimensions. In this diptych I show the planar time of religious paintings where all events are contemporaneous.

As you can see the horse has been made almost invisible, detected only by a faint outline and the shadow it casts. In psychology we know how often in life seemingly invisible things can cast long shadows.

Painting for me is a journey of perseverance, made of work and rework. For example, one day after I had made the horse invisible I decided that it should go back to its original form. So I painted it in. It took me about seven and half hours to do this, but when I had finished I realized I had made a mistake. It then took approximately four and half hours to turpentine the paint off and repaint the image of invisibility, which was the sky showing through faint outline of the horse with extended shadows on the ground. This was such a frustrating day that I remember it vividly. In one sense, I was back where I started from but in another sense, I knew absolutely that the strength of this horse was its message of invisibility. This was the Chinese horse of the wind.

The panels were originally two paintings but then someone suggested I combine them into one, which I did. Sometimes I think I should have left them as single panels but I can’t separate them because they were sold long ago. And who knows, perhaps like the horse, I would put them back again.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - DAY OF ATONEMENT/BODHISATTVA, oil on linen, diptych, 60"x96", each panel 60"x48”

Tobi Zausner - DAY OF ATONEMENT/BODHISATTVA,

oil on linen, diptych, 60"x96", each panel 60"x48”

This is another diptych. It shows psychological evolution. The figure on the left is imprisoned, but the bars float because they are of his own making. We all have made prisons for ourselves. The figure on the right is smiling, because his bars have turned to loaves of bread. What had once held him back has now become nourishment for his enlightenment. His shackles have turned to gold and in a later drawing I did, they are breaking and freedom is becoming available. This, like all my works, is a painting about an internal or psychological state.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - ADVICE TO THE IMPERFECT II, oil on canvas, 48"x60”

Tobi Zausner - ADVICE TO THE IMPERFECT II,

oil on canvas, 48"x60”

Speaking about psychology, some of you may remember this painting, because a cropped version appeared on the cover of American Psychologist. A photo of a Japanese woman swimming while holding two umbrellas inspired this work. The photo was old and I don’t know the significance of its image, perhaps it was part of a festival. If someone knows, please tell me. In the painting, I used my friend Janice as a model. She had brown hair, but red looked better with the colors of the painting and she said she didn’t mind being portrayed as a redhead.

The image of someone swimming with two umbrellas fascinated me because it meant that choice was not necessary. It seemed to signify the end of dichotomy; you could now have both. And in holding both, like holding two sides of a question or two points of view, you swim from a bounded into an unbounded area, suggesting freedom and openness. Holding two sides of a question or two points of view is like embracing a paradox. I read somewhere that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said paradox is closest we will ever get to knowing the truth. Or perhaps she is carrying the umbrella of the flesh and the umbrella of the spirit. There are so many possibilities.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - METAPHOR III, oil on linen, 31"x52"

Tobi Zausner - METAPHOR III, oil on linen, 31" x 52"

I like to swim and to make paintings of swimming. Perhaps the man and woman are meeting underwater but psychologically and in Jungian theory, they may refer to the meeting of the feminine and the masculine aspects of the mind to achieve personality integration. As that, it may signify the union of the conscious and the unconscious minds. The man, whose eyes are open, represents consciousness, swimming underwater to the woman, whose eyes are closed, representing the unconscious mind. It becomes a diving into oneself, an exploration for union.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - SAMENESS, DEPTH OF MYSTERY IV, oil on canvas, 70"x50”

Tobi Zausner - SAMENESS, DEPTH OF MYSTERY IV,

oil on canvas, 70"x50”

In this work, I have tried to show that hierarchy is an illusion. The little boy acolyte holds the umbrella for the monk but everything vanishes either into darkness or into light. All becomes one. Also in Buddhism, the umbrella can symbolize the bodhi tree under which Buddha became enlightened. Having a little boy hold the umbrella shows that enlightenment may result from even the smallest stimulus. In psychology, realization may also seem to come from a small stimulus.

About the time I started to draw as a child, I also started to read. This double fascination with art and information combined in the psychology of art. Psychology has helped me to understand the imagery in my work and to pinpoint aspects of my creative process that correspond to psychological theory. It has also shown me that art is the exteriorization of an inner life.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - MEMORIES , oil on canvas, 50"x73”

Tobi Zausner - MEMORIES II, oil on canvas, 50"x73” and a giclée print

For example, this painting called Memories, which is also a giclée print, was started when an unscrupulous landlord was harassing me into vacating my loft. It was only years later that I realized I painted an aspect of my life at that time. I had to pack up my things and leave.

What I consciously meant to say with this work and what it says for me about the human condition is that it’s necessary to rid oneself of old emotional baggage, hence the title, Memories. We all have excess baggage, which we need to shed. Carrying that baggage makes us feel as though we are struggling through ice and snow. As you can see, this is a psychological landscape; it is not possible to pull a large cart with such little wheels through deep snow. I think that if we could jettison our old baggage, our emotional terrain would change from barren and cold isolation to a rich green countryside of rebirth. This hope is intimated in the right side of the horizon where a sunnier light appears.

In my work, Jungian psychology has been especially relevant with its concept of the collective unconscious and archetypes.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - MY FRAGRANT ADVENTURES I, pencil on paper, 30"x22"

Tobi Zausner - MY FRAGRANT ADVENTURES I,

pencil on paper, 30"x22"

Archetypes are images so profoundly etched in human consciousness that they are immediately available, such as the representation of a mother and child. I decided that because the image was so easily assimilated, I could make it unusual. Here you see they are on water.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - THE WIND STIRS THE SURFACE OF THE LAKE, 1971-1974, painting, 54"x40" oil on canvas

Tobi Zausner - THE WIND STIRS THE SURFACE OF

THE LAKE, 1971-1974, painting, 54"x40" oil on canvas

The title is from hexagram 64 in the I Ching, which is the Chinese Book of Changes (Wilhelm, R. I Ching. Translated by Cary F. Baynes. Princeton: Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 235-239). The hexagram is entitled Inner Truth, and its text suggests the painting’s title, The Wind Stirs The Surface Of The Lake. The hexagram also says that the visible is moved by the invisible. As we know in psychology, it is an inner truth that inner invisible forces move the visible. And it is our task to make the invisible visible.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - LE MAL DU PAYS I, oil on canvas, 54"x40"

Tobi Zausner - LE MAL DU PAYS I, oil on canvas, 54"x40"

So why not make something upside down. Even as a child I liked upside down. Also they are flying and if you can fly and defy gravity, then right side up and upside down have no hold over you. I should mention that I did start the painting as a right side up work and only later while working, turned it upside down.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - LE MAL DU PAYS II, oil on canvas, 74"x48"

Tobi Zausner - LE MAL DU PAYS II,

oil on canvas, 74"x48"

I decided to make another version of the painting, but larger. Even though I originally intended for it to be upside down also, over the years, I have come to prefer it right side up as shown.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - THE VERTICAL HORIZON II, oil on canvas, 54"x40"

Tobi Zausner - THE VERTICAL HORIZON II,

oil on canvas, 54"x40"

In this version, the mother and child have become a landscape. She is the sky; her halo is the sun and her clothing, the clouds. The boy is the land and the sea. The plant above him represents the earth with its foliage while his lower body, transformed into a fish tail, makes him a merboy, and also a symbol of the ocean. The horizon becomes a vertical line between the two figures, hence the title, The Vertical Horizon.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - FAIR GAME, oil on canvas, 52" x 66”

Tobi Zausner - FAIR GAME, oil on canvas, 52" x 66”

Another example of an archetype is the Triple Goddess, comprised of the mother, the maiden, and the crone. It is a symbol of transformation. In this work, I show three women playing chess, but portray them as aspects of one person. I think the only fair game is the game you play against yourself; you are your only matched opponent, hence the title. The oldest woman is winning, showing triumph at the end of a long life. The original source for this image was a photo of four women indoors. I changed the image enormously to produce what finally appeared on the canvas. I can’t say that it was what I wanted to say, but rather what came out, because all plans change in the creative process. Although this painting was made from an old photograph, in other works, I paint from life. An example is the portrait of my friend Henry Sturtevant.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - NEW DAWN, oil on linen, 40"x66”

Tobi Zausner - NEW DAWN, oil on linen, 40"x66”

Henry was kind enough to pose for me. The inspiration for this painting was twofold. First, I was invited to be in a show that featured works of art with images of clouds. Then when Henry told me that after having gone to therapy, he was no longer depressed, I said Henry this calls for a celebration. I will make an image of you parting the clouds of your depression and put it in the show. Well, I work so slowly because I always change and rework that I had to put another work in the exhibition, but I do have Henry over my couch today. If you look closely, you can see the clouds have subtle demonic faces, so Henry is pushing away his inner demons. The shell refers to St. James who was drowned preaching the Gospel off the coast of Spain. Henry is an Episcopal priest and also an art historian.

Something that interests me about painting is that it often seems independent of the conscious mind. In other words, things happen on canvas that were completely unplanned and seemingly without my conscious intent. A work of art appears to have a life of its own, related and yet unrelated to the person who made it. Perhaps it is these qualities of unconsciousness and independence of its creator that connects art to the viewing public. An example is found in the Pilgrim series.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - THE GATE OF A LIFETIME II, pencil and pastel on paper, 42"x28”

Tobi Zausner – THE GATE OF A LIFETIME II,

pencil and pastel on paper, 42"x28”

This is a drawing. I almost always do a drawing before I do a painting.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - THE PILGRIM, Early Stage, oil on canvas, 82"x57”

Tobi Zausner - THE PILGRIM, Early Stage,

oil on canvas, 82"x57”

This is an early stage of the painting. Then it began to change. When this happens to a work, it feels like the work has to change as much as I have to change it. In other words, it’s what the painting needs, as if the work has a life of its own.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - THE PILGRIM, oil on canvas, 82"x57”

Tobi Zausner - THE PILGRIM, oil on canvas, 82"x57”

This is what happened to the painting; it became a night scene. He is crossing a bridge of stones, not a ladder and is coming to solid ground. I so wanted him to come into a nice garden and rest but the painting wouldn’t allow that. It needed and insisted that the path continue, so it did. I tried to make it as nice as possible with palm trees. The model for the tree was a little palm tree that I had in my loft.

The bird that flies near him is a psychopomp, a guide for the soul. The little red animal is a salamander, which was thought by alchemists to be able to withstand fire. In other words it could go through a fire and come out intact, symbolic of a transforming individual who could go through a crisis and come out whole.

A similar transformation occurred in another work.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - HIGH JOY, 28” x 41,” pencil, pastel and watercolor on paper

Tobi Zausner - HIGH JOY, 28” x 41,” pencil, pastel

and watercolor on paper

Here again is the early drawing.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - NIGHTBIRDS (Early Stage), oil on canvas, 40"x54”

Tobi Zausner - NIGHTBIRDS (Early Stage), oil on canvas, 40"x54”

Here is an early stage of the painting, where it is still a daytime scene.

(Slide) Tobi Zausner - NIGHTBIRDS, oil on canvas, 40"x54”

Tobi Zausner – NIGHT BIRDS, oil on canvas, 40"x54”

And here the painting is a nightscape and the colors have changed.