The University Professors Press frequently seeks out using the work of humanistic artists for our covers. Many of these artists also have connections with humanistic, existential, or transpersonal psychology. We have included some information below about these artists and their artwork.
Dr. Richard Bargdill is an artist, an environmental activist, and an associate professor of psychology at the Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author (2014) of An Artist’s Thought Book: Intriguing Thoughts about the Artistic Process (2nd Edition). Rich has published over two dozen poems in various journals and books. He has won a couple of awards both for his poetry and his visual artwork. His 2009 sculpture called “I’m a tree chopped down everyday” was awarded 1st place at the official Pennsylvania State Art show. For more information about Dr. Bargdill and his art, visit his Cover Artist Page.
Kristyn Beckstrom is a Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Expressive Arts Therapist residing in San Diego California. She discovered her love for emotional artistic expression by working through many of her own personal struggles on the canvas. Most of her art features the female form in various poses and colors that capture her internal world. Her work is introspective and flows from her with very little thought, it all appears to emerge from her subconscious. For more information about Kristyn Beckstrom and her art, visit her Cover Artist Page.
Dr. Nisha Gupta is a liberation psychologist, art activist, and phenomenological researcher who disseminates research findings about people’s lived experiences of oppression and empowerment through artistic formats for social advocacy and community healing. Her projects include: “ILLUMINATE” a phenomenological short film about the lived experience of being in the LGBTQ closet, for which she received the 2020 Annual APA Division 5 Distinguished Dissertation Award in Qualitative Methods; and “DESI EROS,” a series of surrealist folk art paintings about the lived experience of reclaiming erotic power among women from the South Asian Diaspora, which was featured on the NPR-affiliated podcast and radio program “The Academic Minute.” At the University of West Georgia, where she teaches as an assistant professor of psychology, she founded the PHENOMENOLOGICAL ART COLLECTIVE, a research & creative arts lab through which she teaches students to disseminate phenomenological research to the public through the expressive arts. She also hosts workshops as a consultant in partnership with community organizations, through which she teaches arts-based phenomenology to community members and the public as a therapeutic method. For more information on Dr. Gupta and her art, visit her Cover Artist Page.
Marguerite Laing was born in Auckland, the great-granddaughter of one of New Zealand’s most esteemed artists, Charles Blomfield. In the 1970s while living in London, she met and later married the eminent Scottish psychiatrist and author, Dr. R.D. Laing. When not in London, they spent their time in the enchanted mountains of continental Europe and the United States with their son, Charles, until Laing’s death in 1989. For more than two decades Marguerite has had a psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice, which imparts some of her work with an other-worldliness and may even inspire a profound sense of human experience. For more information on Marguerite Laing and her art, including samples of her art, visit her Cover Artist Page.