Creativity as soul-food

In recent months I’ve kept on coming into contact with the concepts of colour therapy and art therapy. I haven’t yet investigated exactly how those with experience in these areas define them but common sense tells me they are “disciplines” whereby people use colour and art for therapeutic means, to assist with a healing process in one way or another.

I remember back in school days I did a lot of art and was really into it. I loved to paint, collage and sculpt. The trouble was, as far as I see it now, I was always doing it to impress; whether that be to get a good grade, or just to take home and be praised by Mum and Dad. It was never used (for me) as a tool of self-expression.

When I thought about the concept of art therapy I wasn’t sure how I would even begin going about doing art as a process for expression and healing, without worrying about the what the final product was, because I seem to be somewhat conditioned for my art to look “good”…whatever that means. When I came to think about it, I did wander how art can be good or bad, right or wrong? Art is art. It’s an expression. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes argues in Women Who Run With the Wolves, the book I’m reading at the moment, it’s soul-food. (This won’t be the last time I refer to this book – its one of my sources of a huge amount of inspiration at the moment.) Creativity feeds, and is an expression of, your deepest Self.

I’ve been meaning to give this art therapy thing a go but for some reason I hadn’t got started with it yet. It’s even available at the Olive Tree Cancer Support Centre where I go to a young women’s breast cancer support group (they call it art counselling there). I think it was that concept of not exactly knowing how to do art without focusing on the final piece, and instead the process. Then I came across this in Women Who Run With the Wolves:

“Go ahead, struggle through it. Pick up the pen already and put it to the page and stop whining. Write. Pick up the brush…and paint. Dancers, put on the loose chemise, tie the ribbons in your hair, at your waist, or on your ankles and tell the body to take it from there. Dance. Actress, playwright, poet, musician, or any other. Generally, just stop talking. Don’t say one more word unless you’re a singer. Shut yourself in a room with a ceiling or in a clearing under the sky. Do your art. Generally, a thing cannot freeze if it is moving. So move. Keep moving.”

It spoke to me…and so I did.

I decided I wanted to share this piece with you mainly because this was quite an experience for me and this blog is, for me, about expression of my process, opening up my world, and communicating some of that with those that want to be communicated with.

I’ve been feeling rather nervous, and a whole lot of other emotions, about next week’s chemotherapy, mainly because of my previous experiences so far. I simply don’t want to go through it again. But who says this whole Life thing is about what you want and don’t want, eh? It’s a process that I have to get through in my own way, be present with and grow from in whatever way I can. There isn’t any choice in it.

This afternoon I very suddenly felt now was the time to use colour to express and channel those feelings that were going on about next week’s chemo. I got out the pastels and drew strokes of pink and black, for no particular reason that I knew of, side by side each other on the paper, and before I knew it my eyes welled up and tears started dripping from my face onto the paper. There was something about the beauty and healing pink right next to the harshness of the black. So simple, but that’s all I needed to express to release what was going on for me.

The piece went on. Minimal thought into what it was turning into, just colours and shapes of expression coming together.

A place of peace for me is our bathroom. When I’m feeling rough in the mornings Kate often runs me a bath and lights the candles in the bathroom. We have this gorgeous old ‘cottagey’ lilac-blue bathroom with a really calming feeling about it. I lie in the bath as the morning sunlight shines through the wisteria-framed window. In my fairly foggy state after chemo I like to look at the beautiful shapes and colours that form as the sunlight falls on the water and the edge of the white bath. Just looking at that in itself and being in that moment is enough to swallow me up in a moment of raw beauty.

The colours that started to come next onto my paper were those from the bathroom, that place of tranquillity. And a teardrop shape emerged from the proceeding strokes around where the tears had just fallen onto the paper. Despite the teardrop shape though, and the contrast with the harsh black, the feelings of tranquillity and beauty were the strongest, shining through and making their presence be known on the paper. Then I realised that that’s my process in a nutshell…and I wanted to share.