International Society for

Shamanistic Research2009

The Artist as Shaman: an Interdisciplinary & Multicultural

Consideration

Denita M. Benyshek

I meet my spirit animal.

We travel north,

parallel to,

but not upon,

a narrow asphalt

highway.

At this fenceless time in my life,

I don’t have a home.

The Institution

But, I continued forward.

I wrote: I am White Horse in the home of my heart.

The drum

represents an animal

for riding.

I would become the prairie.

If these routes were charted…

Andy Goldsworthy is “like a modern shaman, traveling the world,

leaving his undeniable mark wherever he goes” (Gibron).

A shaman:

-Performs community service in response to psychological, social, or spiritual needs.

-Mediates between different states of consciousness.

-Creates connection to “higher powers” in an understood form.

Ruth Inge-Heinze

The Calling

Personality Traits

Androgyny

Marcel Duchamp as Rose Selavy

where two become one

forming a connection…

an indication of paradise…

another trait shared…

in/sanity

How?

“The gift turned inward, unable to be given,

becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison.”

May Sarton, poet

A

new

empowered

identity

emerges.

I come to you because I desire to see.

The initiate feels cut apart, viewing limbs separated and bones exposed, dying to the former life.

I felt myself gently open.

In the spacious studio of my soul, I witnessed the creation of a new me.

Consider the word “remembering”…

Initiation

Dareyouseeasoulatthewhite heat?

EmilyDickinson

“A painting is an abyss in which the eye is lost.” Paul Cezanne

The artist perceives “… cosmic patterns existing beyond Newtonian space and time.”

J. Funk

Did I exist in three realms, past, present, and future, at the same time?

In The Healing Path, I painted a

child with golden curls.

Later, my golden son is born.

…the spirit of painting knew my son –

fifteen years before his birth.

A shaman:

-Performs community service in response to psychological, social, or spiritual needs.

-Mediates between different states of consciousness.

-Creates connection to “higher powers” in an understood form.

“… it is the individual shaman who translates the sacred into the secular in a language s/he creates along the way.”

Ruth Inge-Heinze

Art is a language.

Denita.Benyshek @ gmail.com www . denitabenyshek . com