Steven Saitzyk is an Associate Professor at one of the leading art colleges in North America, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena where he teaches year round.  He is the author of ART HARDWARE: The Definitive Guide to Artists' Materials, a book about the nature of materials for artist use and was a columnist for the artist’s magazines Site Local, and Visions.  He is a member of the National Art Materials Trade Association (NAMTA), and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).    He is considered one of the world's experts on artist's materials. See: www.trueart.info.  He has studied and worked directly with some of the leading contemporary artists of our time, as well as masters of Buddhist art, meditation, philosophy, and psychology, among them The Venerable Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.  He has attended a Buddhist Seminary and has practiced and taught meditation for more than forty years, as well as consulted and lectured on meditation, Dharma Art, Shambhala Art, Vajrayana Buddhism and its iconography, Tibetan art, symbolism, as well as on the materials used to create both Asian painting and art of the western world.  He is author of Place Your Thoughts Here: Meditation for the Creative Mind and one of the founders of Shambhala Art, a non-profit arts education program designed to integrate meditation and contemplation with the creative and viewing processes.  He is its current international director.  See: www.shambhalaart.org.  He has also been a painter for most of his life and is part of numerous collections.

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