TOBI ZAUSNER, PhD, LMSW
Tobi Zausner, PhD, LCSW, is a research psychologist, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a clinician in private practice, and a visual artist with works in major museums and private collections. Dr. Zausner, who investigates consciousness, nonlinear dynamics, cognitive neuroscience, and creativity, is on the Advisory Board for the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research and an officer on the Board of A.C.T.S (Arts, Crafts, and Theatre Safety), a nonprofit organization investigating health hazards in the arts.
Dr. Zausner has taught at the C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, Saybrook University, New York University, Long Island University, and The New School. Her book, When Walls Become Doorways: Creativity and the Transforming Illness won a Nautilus Prize. It examines the influence of physical illness on the creativity of visual artists. The book demonstrates that setbacks can be used to create a better life and greater art, and what we consider to be our weakness may be the source of our greatest strength.
Her second book, The Creative Trance; Altered States of Consciousness and the Creative Process, was published by Cambridge University Press. It explores the presence of altered states of consciousness inherent in creativity. The book examines the creative process through the lenses of nonlinear dynamics, cognitive neuroscience, and evolutionary theory, and shows the positive roles that disabilities can play in creating a work of art.
Currently Dr. Zausner is writing a textbook for Palgrave-Macmillan on altered states of consciousness across domains, including writing, visual art, music, dance, theater, and sports, among others. She demonstrates that while all creative processes occur in altered states of consciousness, these states can have domain-specific aspects. Dr. Zausner also investigates the creativity of shamanism, mediumship, and the philosophies of a nonphysical self. She has written multiple research articles and chapters for books.
The Wheel
(Oil on Canvas, 50” x 58”)
In this 50 x 58 inch oil painting on canvas entitled The Wheel, the central figure of a young blonde girl in a long yellow silk dress is a portrait of me from an old family photo taken in my childhood. I was a flower girl at my cousin’s wedding and the basket I hold is filled with rose petals to scatter before the bride. Other figures in the painting include an old woman with a cane, a baby in a wicker pram, a crane, a mother cat with two kittens, and a butterfly that is also a kite.
The image displays the LACPA theme of Generative Entanglements in multiple ways: the generational connections in a single family, the biological interspecies connections of human and nonhuman animals, and the metaphysical connections when figures in the painting are incarnations of souls.
The circle they travel refers to many Wheels. There is the Wheel of Life with its ages from birth to death, the Wheel of Death, and Rebirth with its multiple symbols of renewal, and the Great Cosmic Wheel of the Universe. It is all these Wheels and more that we may not yet recognize.
As the Wheel of Life, it shows successive stages of existence from infancy to childhood, to motherhood represented by the cat with kittens, to old age. As the Wheel of Death, and Rebirth, it has the butterfly, a symbol of transformation, here as a kite with a string connecting the old woman and the infant, so that the old woman can transform into a baby through rebirth, and in each physical life the baby can transform into old age and rebirth. As the Great Cosmic Wheel of the Universe, it shows the continued order of the universe in all its manifestations.
At the center of the circle is a pine tree. Pines are evergreens, symbols of everlasting life, and generators of energy. Religions and mythologies across cultures believe in a world tree of interconnectedness and universal order. Standing at the center point of the universe, the tree is simultaneously a Tree of Life and an axis mundi, a cosmic center connecting the underworld, the earth, and the heavens. A river flows around the island and the full moon is at its peak power. Rivers denote boundaries in the physical world and metaphysically they can symbolize the separation of the world of living from the dimension of Spirit.
Here, the young girl crosses a bridge from the Wheel into the unknown. She looks quietly happy, and the bird standing in the river is a crane, a healing animal. Cross culturally, birds are psychopomps, guides for the soul, and here the crane connects to the young girl as possibly a guardian. The young girl has multiple meanings. She can be a soul leaving the bonds of reincarnation. She can also be all of us finding the courage to leave rooted for reaching, discarding old patterns and habits to cross into the self-evolution of entering the unknown.