Art as Therapy: An overlooked form of healing and self-knowing
Creating art offers profound therapeutic benefits, from providing a mental escape to helping manage chronic pain, as described by various artists. Engaging in art, whether professionally or for fun, deeply impacts personal well-being, enhancing mental, emotional, and physical states.
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Margaret Weinland
1 ago 2024
1/8/24
When this subject was first proposed to me I couldn’t think of what to say. Yes, I am an artist and yes, I’m a retired psychotherapist, but I’m not an Art Therapist. But just in the
broadest sense, making art is “therapeutic” - right?
Art therapists understand a lot more about HOW & WHY art can be therapeutic, and they know some ways to use art to help people deal with a wide variety of life’s issues. I think any
artist would say that the act of creating something results in much more than just the physical thing we create.
Anyway, while I was thinking about what I think about “Art as Therapy” I thought I’d find out what my artist friends think. The first person I heard from writes an interesting blog, so I asked him if he had written anything “covering” this subject. His response:
“Much of my verse and much of my art has been me getting things out so I can go on through the day....(so my work) does not ‘cover’ that topic, but rather IS that topic”.
Maybe our creations deliberately express something going on inside, or maybe we begin to make art and, in the doing, find that something is being revealed or worked out. Or both. Another artist spoke to a different therapeutic aspect of creating:
“I only know that when doing art, I can get lost like no other time. Everyone should have opportunities to get lost. As artists, we are lucky for that flight from the every day”.
A poignant statement to the same effect came from a young girl, disabled and frequently bedridden with a chronic pain condition. Her mother, also an artist, wrote that “one of the
only ways Marynn survives is by distracting herself from the pain through creating art”. Marynn herself says:
“For me art is freedom when everything in my life is out of control.”
What could be more “therapeutic” that the feeling she is experiencing - a physical distraction, a sense of taking charge, actually entering an altered state. At the same time that I was thinking about what my own art does for me, I saw a piece in the NYTimes (6/28/24) titled:
Make Something With Your Hands (Even if It’s Hideous)
Creating stuff is good for your brain.
Yes, your brain, your body, your soul, all of it reaps a benefit that I think of as “therapy” even when we aren’t looking to our art to do this for us.
Just involving ourselves in an artistic or creative activity can lead to deep personal results beyond the potential birth of a new piece.
Some of the people I approached for their thoughts on “Art as Therapy” are people who make all or much of their living from their art. One wrote:
“I never considered it to be that. Art is a way for me to
communicate and allows me to leave markers as I
continue to exist.”
Although she doesn’t put in those words, if by making art she has a sense that she has communicated and has left markers of her existence, isn’t that a deeply “therapeutic result?
Much more than a new physical piece is at stake in pursuing this work. And perhaps if a person has this sense of making her mark, she won’t need to “go to” therapy (just kidding).
Another response was:
“Art is my vocation, and while it did not replace therapy in my life, it has functioned along with it and continues well beyond as a way of learning about myself and working through things. At times I have felt that making paintings, or drawings, is like laying down stepping stones in front of me so that I can move forward.”
Even one artist who didn’t think she could offer anything on the subject, because “a lifelong commitment to art is not necessarily the same as Art as Therapy”, wrote something that I do think is relevant to “art as therapeutic”. She wrote:
“At five years old I KNEW that art would be my life and have seriously worked on it ever since then. ...I have dedicated my life to art, gladly working out HOW and WHY I need to do it. ... I cannot imagine what it is like to NOT be an artist.”
Although she didn’t really relate to the topic as presented, I think her statement does speak to MY interpretation of it. Maybe I’m reading too much into it to say that from an early age she is not only creating stuff, but is engaging in internal work.
She is conscious of doing this work, and this inner process is part of her developing her identity and sense-of- self throughout her life. I’d call it therapeutic but as a “therapist” I think I take a very broad view of the idea.
A lot of us who pursue creative work probably aren’t this conscious of how and why we are doing it except perhaps on the general level that “it feels good”. A fellow painter in my watercolor group offered:
“Making art is respite, and works with a whole different part of a person’s brain. Sometimes people just need a break to reset and keep on keeping on. Making art demands complete concentration and focus and may help a person quiet the monkey brain.”
I would call my own experiences of spending some hours on a drawing or painting, or prowling around with my camera and editing photographs, as highly meditative. It can definitely alter my mind, body and soul - changing my mood for the better, deepening my breathing, releasing tension, feeling at one with the world.
I don’t achieve “concentration and focus” because I’m trying to but because I slide into it while "working” on something.
Personally, art is therapy, or at least one of my several therapies. I suppose “Art as Therapy” is something else, and “Art Therapy” - consciously using art as a therapeutic modality with a trained professional - is something else again.
I think all of us who make art - whether professionally or “for fun” - derive enormous therapeutic benefits, whether or not we put it into words. In fact, like the NYTimes, I’d encourage anyone to get involved in making something for these reasons alone. It’s therapy. In its broadest sense. Or as another artist & psychologist friend wrote:
“Art and therapy are equivalents. They both reflect essential mechanisms by which humans liberate themselves from the bondage of chaos, stasis, inertia, ennui, rage, meaninglessness, compulsion, trauma, rejection, impulse, delusion, isolation, negative judgement, guilt, resentment, emptiness, and darkness; and open the doors to creativity, growth, inclusion, acceptance, passion, expression, connection, energy, courage, experimentation, risk, adventure, engagement, purpose, wonder, commitment, self discipline, light and love.”
AMEN!
Though this stops short of promising world peace, the internal rewards of engaging with art are many! I’ve only been writing about art’s personal benefits but, by extension, art (and “the arts”) is one of many ways we have to share these benefits and influence our broader communities. This platform can be one place to share our art, but also to share our experiences of being artists. What’s YOUR response to the theme “Art as Therapy?”