The Environmental Portrait Series-Artist Statement

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: Environmental Portrait Series

In the early 1970's like many people, I became interested in a series of books by Carlos Castenada called " The Teachings of Don Juan". In the book, Castenada discusses the concept of "The Power Spot", a place either real or imaginary that a person goes to, to center themselves or recharge their spiritual energy.

At the same time, I was studying hypnosis. This consisted of reading about the work of Milton Ericson, master hypno-therapist, and taking a series of workshops on Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP). I put these incongruous elements together and began "The Environmental Portrait Series"

"The Environmental Portrait Series" used a series of word association tests to determine if a person integrated the world primarily using visual, auditory or kinesthetic hooks. Once determined, this information was used to create a visualization experience similar to hypnosis. The visualization took the person to their "power spot" and a painting was designed using the "power spot" as a visual background, the individual being surrounded by their personal symbols.