The Therapy Side Of Art

"Art can permeate the very deepest part of us, where no words exist."

-- Eileen Miller, 

The Girl Who Spoke With Pictures: 

Autism Through Art

Abstract 2-25-14

"I am a lonely painter

I live in a box of paints

I'm frightened by the devil

But I'm drawn to those ones that ain't."

-- Joni Mitchell, "A Case of You"

Sunflower 2-25-14

"... in art therapy, your inner world  of images, feelings, thought, and ideas

are always of primary importance to the experience."

-- Cathy Maldiochi, The Art Therapy Sourcebook

I know full well that whenever I launch a new 365 days project, there will be good days and there will be bad days. It's simply part of the bargain. Part of the journey.

A project like this one couldn't exist without the bad days. If it did, it would be a fucking lie.

My very first year-long project was spawned by bad days. It was a year of self portraits that I didn't show to anybody except the therapist who suggested I use my photography as art therapy.

That was over 3 years ago, and I am still using my art as therapy when things get rough and tough. 

Like this week.

I'm in a little bad patch. A bit of a skid.

I'm struggling with some stuff I thought I had conquered, but now is back, and I'm discouraged.

It's been a difficult 3-steps-back kind of week. I've noticed that look in my eyes again. It's a look I only get when the darkness creeps in -- my brow crawls down into a knot between my eyes and my jaw clenches, freezing my mouth into a perpetual grimace. I look like I'm bracing for impact.

I'm scared of how I feel.

But as in the past 3 years, when it feels like the ship is sinking, there is a tiny life boat that floats me away from the downward spiral.

Art.

Even when I don't feel like it, I know that immersing myself if something, anything creatively engaging will help me stay afloat until the rescue helicopter comes to airlift me out.

Yesterday it was finger painting. Yep. Good old fashioned kindergarten-style finger painting. 

First I turned on K.D. Lang's Hymns of the 49th Parallel (the only music that can reach me at times like this). Then I put on my art apron, rolled up my sleeves and schmutzed paint around on paper for a couple of hours.

It helped.

It didn't fix my bad shit, or make my bad shit go away. But the feel of cold paint on my hands and the sound of healing music in my ears did something to my mind that helped me forget the twisting in my guts until I was able to catch my breath. 

I made two paintings. They may not be any good. Art critics might tear them to shreds. Real artists might think they're crap. A passer-by might think their 4-year-old nephew could do better. But I didn't make them for critics or artists or passers-by or anyone's damn nephew.

I did them to lift the pressure of the paws of the beast that's been sitting on my chest and panting its hot sour breath in my face. Kind of like throwing a stick for it to chase. He'll be back.

It doesn't matter if my finger paintings are any good.

Making them was good for me.

I Don't Need No Stinkin' Paintbrush

"We become what we behold.

We shape our tools, and thereafter, our tools shape us."

-- Marshall McLuhan

Peacock (acrylic on board) 2-8-14

"The intentions of a tool are what it does.

A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift.

They are what it is made for.

But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know.

Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing."

-- Philip Pullman,
His Dark Materials Trilogy:
The Golden Compass/The Subtle Knife/The Amber Spyglass

I'm afraid of paintbrushes.

Potato, palette knife, wine corks, comb and pencil 2-8-14

There, I said it.

They make me anxious.

Probably it's because I never learned to use them right. I've just faked it all my life, and not very well.

I don't know what it is. Something about painting with a brush feels too formal, or fussy, or proper, or unforgiving. Painting with brushes is intimidating -- like making forced conversation about topics I don't understand with people I don't like at a cocktail party where everyone's drinking 30-year-old cognac in crystal stemware when I'd be so much happier just shooting the shit with my best friend on the backyard patio over a bottle of $3 Merlot in Solo cups.

At the art store, I never know which brushes to buy. The choices are overwhelming, and good brushes aren't exactly cheap. If I fuck one up, it's gonna cost me some coin. And I don't take very good care of the brushes I do have. Just ask them. I let paint dry in their bristles all the time, or else I leave them soaking for days in Mason jars half full of paint-stained water. When I finally rescue them they're all frayed and fuzzy and stained. They look startled. Shell shocked.

Nevertheless, sometimes I do get the itch to paint a picture. And when I do, so as to allay any fear or anxiety, I typically don't reach for the brushes. I go for more non-traditional tools, non-threatening tools, familiar tools, tools that aren't specifically meant for painting at all.

I once had a ceramics teacher named Martha who taught me that "anything can be a tool."

Like potatoes. Or a comb. Or a pencil. Or wine corks (n this case, the rubberized kind from that cheap Merlot I was mentioning.) If I do use a painting-specific tool, it's more likely to be a palette knife than a brush. I like to scoop big blobs of paint like peanut butter straight from the jar and then glop it around. Smushing and smearing wet paint around with a potato feels good. So does zipping through it with a plastic comb.

As with most of the art forms I dabble in, painting is about therapy. I do it for the feeling I get while I'm actively engaged in it, not necessarily for how I feel about the piece that results from it. And if painting with brushes makes me anxious, well then it's not therapeutic. It is counterproductive. And I'm not about that life. Not anymore.

I don't know if my peacock painting is any good. And I don't really care. All I know is that while I was painting it, I felt happy. And feeling happy is always a good thing, no matter how you paint it.