Talented Twosome: Retired Geist couple create their own works of art

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By Renee Larr

When most people retire, they look to hobbies to keep busy. For one Geist couple, their hobbies of choice happen to include creating works of art and writing a book. When Barb McDaniel retired from her job as an elementary school teacher, she found herself in a transition.

“After I retired I got started in making collages. For me, it was because I was going through this transition. All my friends had grandchildren and I didn’t. What I found out, is my collage work is about healing and evolving,” Barb said.

Her collages led into drawing, photography and painting. She was drawn to acrylics because they’re not as expensive as oils and can easily be changed. Her son Tim, a Herron Art School graduate, sometimes assists his novice mother with parts of her works via Skype.

“I had different paintings I was showing him. He’s so good. He knows how to be encouraging, but also how to advise as we go along,” Barb said.

In their home, Barb has two places in which she finds creativity. Her art studio in a three seasons room and her “woman cave.” The McDaniels had a loft area they wanted to enclose for Barb to use as a workspace but it ended up being her “happy place.” The walls are adorned with bohemian, gypsy style decorations and Barb’s various drawings, paintings and photographs.

One photograph of Barb’s, taken during the couple’s travels, even made it on to the cover her husband’s, Rich, newly, published book, “The Portal to Your Inner World.” The book was published in June, but Rich has been working on it for years.

“I like to say it was 10 years in the writing and 40 years in the making. It’s about a process I discovered about 40 years ago that enabled me to literally change my emotional reaction to things,” Rich said.

An event that look place many years in the past led Rich down a road of self-discovery. He wanted to determine why a normal day-to-day interaction with a co-worker evoked such a powerful, fearful response. During his introspection, he came to realize the interaction with a co-worker reminded him of a particularly powerful event that happened to him as a child.

“The first experience that I had with the process – I was at a meeting with some work people. At the end of the meeting, this girl gave me a hug, and it just freaked me out. I told myself I needed to figure it out. What I realized was I felt like I was being influenced to do something I didn’t want to do in a sexual way. It came from when I was molested as a little boy,” Rich said.

With that powerful realization, Rich began to study psychotherapy experts, Carl Jung and Joseph LeDoux. Rich quickly discovered that while the men were experts, they weren’t explaining a way to deal with negative emotions that most people could easily understand. Rich decided to write a book detailing how he dealt with his own “stored emotions.”

“Our feelings lead our thoughts. Not the thought that generates the feeling. When we’re under this animated state of the stored feelings it will also open a portal to our inner world where we can identify where this originated. I talk about originating incidences. If we can go back to these originating incidences then we can reintegrate the stored feelings back to it’s innate state rather than one that is stored and extreme. The process is very gentle,” Rich said of his technique.

Rich published the book and has already booked seminars to assist others with finding the portal to their inner world. Rich hopes his book can help others as it’s already help him, his wife, and countless others. For more information on his seminars, visit hermitageindy.org. To purchase Rich’s book, visit amazon.com.

About Barb and Rich

Names of children: Barb has two sons, Fred Pence (39) and Tim Pence (36)

Dream vacation destination: Paris

Favorite restaurant in Geist: The Grill at 79th and Fall Creek

Favorite dishes at restaurant: Tuesday night filet mignon for Rich and dinner salad with grilled chicken for Barb

Biggest change you’ve seen in Geist area: Significant housing development and traffic congestion

Favorite activity to do together in spare time: Golf for Rich and arts for Barb. We like to eat out every evening, and always like to meet interesting people.


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