Joe Szimhart:

artist, author, cult information and behavioral health specialist.

Go to “consultations” on menu above for further guidance regarding intervention, media appearances, lectures, and cult-related problems.

Prices currently range from $110 to $1500 plus shipping

jszimhart@gmail.com

where I make art in Stowe, PA

Thunderbird with Nest painting, 30x40 inches 2023

Kaffa Legend 30x40 acrylic 2024

Tea Block 30x40 acrylic 2024

“Joco" 18x24 oil 2024

(text/numbers on painting from back of photo) of my father “Joco” (yah’-tsaw)

Jozef Szimhart age 23 from his 1945 picture when he was in the Axis air force as a Hungarian electrician conscript who rehabbed Focke-Wulf fighter aircraft engines. He was taken prisoner by the American Allies in 1945.

He became a US citizen after we immigrated in 1951. He worked full time as an electrician until he was 90 years old, then passed away in 2014 at age 91.

1939Focke-Wulf 190

Rock Paper Scissors 16x20 oil 2024

Brushes with Failure, Fame, and Death 11x14 (3) acrylic 2024

Lion with Toy Sphinx 48x48 oil 2017

Tyger with Bunny 36x48 oil 2017 [SOLD] after Wm. Blake’s “The Tyger”

47 Down 36x48 oil 2015 [SOLD]

one of a series of three with tool and crossword

Chickadee Cross 40x30 acrylic 2022

Tomahawk 24x30 oil 2020

Green Duck 24x30 oil 2020

Moth Dream 12x16 oil 2012 [SOLD]

Turtlebug 24x36 oil 2017

Dingo Dreaming 24x36 oil 2024 [award winner at studio B Gallery]

Birch Bark 30x40 oil 2024

Odd Bird in Nest 12x14 oil [SOLD]

Wish Bones 48x48 oil 2020

Raven’s Fate 30x40 oil 2021 [contra Einstein’s quip that “God does not play dice with the universe”]

Hitchcock’s Raven 40x40 oil 2021

The Big Hatch 16x20 oil 2015 [grandiose ideas]

Edgy Black Bird 24x30 oil 2018

Tesla’s Pigeons 48x36 oil 2017 [SOLD to private Philadelphia collection]

Raven Desk 24x36 oil 2012 “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Hatter asks Alice.

Under Nietzsche’s Hammer 16x20 pastel 1985

Raven mimics Horus 16x20 pastel 1985

Raven in a cage 16x20 pastel 1987? based on bird at Abiquiu, NM animal shelter

Raven with Light 14x20 pastel 1980s

Brown Study 30x40 oil 2018 [SOLD]

Jackrabbit Stew 30x40 oil 2018

Crane on Turtle 24x36 oil [private collection]

based on a Chinese myth

Raven rides Tortoise 16x20 oil 2004

Black Swan edge 24x36 2016 [SOLD]

Inside Outside birds diptych 2 (11x14) oil 2012

Jean Cocteau, The Imposter #1 11x14 acrylic 2019

Entropy, a definition 40x30 oil 2020

Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word 16x20 on board 2019

David Fideler, Sun of God 16x20 acrylic on board 2019

Poison Ivy, from a Snapple cap 20x16 acrylic on board 2019

Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler 11x14 acrylic 2019

Penance: I will not talk in class; I will not decry Cy Twombly 2 (16x20) panels on board acrylic 2019

George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle 20x16 acrylic 2019

This series from 2019 to 2020 are all based on a style called

Boustrophedon

(“to turn like oxen” or plowing the field with oxen) seen in ancient Greek, Safaitic, and Etruscan inscriptions in stone over 2500 years ago, becoming less popular by the Hellenistic period or after 300 BC.

The text is often flipped backwards to forwards as the script descends. Styles found in Hungary flip the script upside down and not backwards. The script can appear as a mirrored version. My reverse words are not always mirrored, but are often written backwards. There are no strict rules.

Most of my passages are taken from published writings by famous authors, but a few are my creation. They range in size from 8x10 to 36x48 in acrylic on canvas (unless designated “on board”).

My series is essentially a modernist pun on an ancient style.

Prices in this series range from $110 to $550 plus shipping.

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets #1 11x14 acrylic 2019

Goethe, Art of Painting 20x16 acrylic 2019

Last Word 20x16 acrylic on board 2019

I.M. Crawford, The Art of the Wandjina 36x48 acrylic 2019

Boustrophedon 30x40 acrylic 2019

Creepy Art in Pink 30x40 acrylic 2020

Derrida, Truth in Painting 30x40 acrylic 2019

Ferrell, The Day without Yesterday (on Lemaitre) 20x16 acrylic on board 2019

McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage 20x16 acrylic on board 2019

So said Voltaire 20x16 acrylic on board 2019

Alfie 16x22 acrylic on watercolor paper 1990?

Cocteau, The Imposter #2 20x16 acrylic on board 2019

Wm Blake, The Tyger (Songs of Experience) 36x48 acrylic 2019

Red Cat Faith 48x36 oil 2014

What Mouse Said 36x24 oil 2014 [SOLD]

Acorn Hunt (after Homer’s Fox Hunt) 30x40 oil 2016

Never pull a rabbit out of a hat by the ears 36x24 oil 2017

Noah and Moby 54x48 acrylic 2012 [SOLD]

Raven into Cosmic Balloon 20x15 oil on board 2013 [SOLD]

Trust 24x36 oil 2013 (First prize winner in exhibit for conference on child abuse, Reading PA)

ICSA Today featured an article about Neo-shamanism by me and my art in this issue that can be found here

Left 422 30x40 oil 2014 (First Place award for Billboard contest, Reading PA)

Orca’s world 2 (36x36) canvas panels oil 2015 on display in gallery

Ordinary Rider 48x48 oil 2018

Finch Caged 24x30 oil 2017

Blue Goat 30x24 oil 2014 [SOLD]

Man not black not white 24x36 oil 2014 (script in Hungarian; ember nem fekete, nem feher)

Moon Clover 16x20 oil on board 2011

Peace Birds 30x40 oil 2017

I Shot the Scarecrow 48x36 oil 2014

Put That in Your Pipe 48x36 oil 2016 [SOLD]

Nullibiety 24x30 oil 2019

Unchained Yellow Bird 30x24 oil 2017

Blue Shepherd 48x36 oil 2016

Weapon Inspector 16x20 oil 2014

At Rest in Blue 48x36 oil 2014

On the Level 24x36 oil 2014

Blue Egg 16x20 oil 2023

Dirt 30x40 oil 2019

Scapegoat 30x40 oil 2018 [SOLD]

Dialing Time 30x40 oil 2019

Pocket Poker 48x36 oil, denim on canvas 2017

Dubai Camel Youth 30x24 oil 2017

Rhino Gold 40x50 oil 2016

I painted After Altamira (36x48) in 2021. It was accepted by the juror into the Pennsylvania Academy Fellowship annual exhibition that ended in January 2023.

The painting reflects a style I developed as an academy student in 1975. Its theme mocks a cave painting and includes Picasso’s quip: “After Altamira, all is decadence…we have invented nothing.”

Picasso lion imagery is blended with Altamira imagery and with linear cubist indications. The painting asks the question: Have we invented nothing? Picasso was wryly indicating that after humans emerged from the primal Edenic state of the innocence of animals, we have fallen into a conscious struggle with re-inventing ourselves through technology, clothing, weapons, finer art, and philosophies. Have we accomplished anything?

Wallflowers 40x30 oil Jun 2023 (companion piece to After Altamira

Seeds 40x30 acrylic June 2023 (adapted from Petit, the poet, Spoon River Anthology by E L Masters)

Daughter #3 48x36 oil 2014 (private collection)

Background in brief:

  • Bachelor of Arts and Sciences: University of Dayton, Ohio

  • Certificate of Completion: painting major, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

  • self-employed handyman and construction worker

  • Art instructor: St. John’s College and at NM; New Mexico State Penitentiary with Project Newgate

  • self-employed as cult information specialist, consultant and interventionist since early 1980s

  • Life Achievement Award from International Cultic Studies Association in 2016

  • Primary therapist for recovery house of 24 males in treatment for substance abuse and addiction, 2000.

  • Crisis Department mental health professional at a psychiatric emergency hospital (retired after 25 years, May 2023)

  • Studio artist at Goggleworks Center for the Arts, Reading, PA from 2011-2018.

  • maintains an art career and studio at home

  • You can purchase my art directly through https://joe-szimhart-art.myshopify.com/ or email me.

Study of Aria 30x40 oil May 2023

Entropy 30x40 oil 2022

Santa Fe, Bill Tate, and me: How an artist became a cult interventionist first appeared in 2020. My memoir primarily concerns the years 1975 through 1993 when I lived in Santa Fe. I moved to that major art center after graduating from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to pursue a career. During my first day in town, I met Bill Tate in his art gallery. We became great friends, but that meeting inadvertently opened a door into a world of weird and esoteric teachings. I walked through that door expecting to find enlightenment and salvation. Five years later, I entered a different world—one of cult interventionists, aka exit-counselors and deprogrammers.

In 2016, the International Cultic Studies Association presented Joe Szimhart with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his efforts.

For a discussion with the author and Jon Atack about this book, go here.

Mushroom Satori: The cult diary is my first novel published through Aperture Press, Reading PA. The story is not autobiographical.

Based on a composite of my cult cases, the story covers the journey of a college dropout whose curiosity about Buddhism in 1997 leads him to a small Zen commune in Northern New Mexico where he ends up spending ten years of his life.

Discouraged and broken after admitting his mistake, he returned home, only to find that recovering from his experience required far more than merely walking away.

Mushroom plays a role in a character’s name and the dramatic turn in the commune leader’s fate.

My YouTube channel “cults and occulture” has over seventy short videos.

This one comments on how and why almost anyone could have been caught up in the January 6 capital invasion.

In 1991, Details ran a 5,000-word feature aggressively titled “The New Age Exorcist” about my intervention work by the successful novelist and writer Michael Disend, himself an ex-member of an abusive Zen Buddhist cult in Rochester, NY that he was in for eight years. Mick followed me around for many months encountering several of my cases—all non-coercive. Details editors would not publish the story unless Mick saw something that required “security” to keep a cult member in a house while they talked with me. We finally got a semblance of that when a young man’s sister insisted that her body-builder friends from her gym be present so her brother would not flee right away after she introduced him to me in her home. The story does not clearly state that it took me all of fifteen minutes to get the young man to talk to me voluntarily for several days, so “security” amounted to curious friends who came and went at will with the young man’s permission. The young man chose to leave the cult called The Masterpath on the third day.

Joe Szimhart has made dozens of appearances on various podcasts, tv shows, and documentaries.

This one by Atrocity Guide appeared in 2023 and features me discussing my work with dozens of people affected by this cult leader.

An image of my painting, Arab with Bread (36x48) appeared in the 2023 Atrocity Guide documentary above, and as a result a collector in Australia purchased it.

At times, my careers cross over!