These cooler, shorter days have encouraged more art exploration, as well as catching up on needed sleep and rest. I recently read an article about the difference between art therapy and therapeutic art making that defined therapeutic art making as focusing more on the product than the process. The article went on to say that by focusing on developing art skills, a person can gain feelings of self-worth and confidence. This made me pause for a moment. Throughout my blogging series I have emphasized art making as being less about what is gained from learning techniques. Had I missed something crucial in my narrative of how therapeutic art making benefits people in recovery from mental illness?
My reasoning had been that I wanted people to think less about appearance, and making “good” art because this might interfere with important benefits of therapeutic art making, such as feeling joy, gaining insight, developing spiritual or inner connection, and experiencing catharsis. But perhaps I didn’t think about the benefits of learning new art processes and experimenting with materials that brings a sense of self-esteem, and confidence that can be so helpful for mental health recovery. So I want to share my art making process this week that speaks to this.
Collage Making Process
I started with wanting to make a simple paper collage as you see from the image below:
But I also wanted to add layers because I love how mixed media/collage looks when it has layers. I am still fairly new to art processes and feel a bit intimidated by trying something new. It is easy to feel disappointed when my idea doesn’t translate to the art piece. I wanted to go beyond the paper collage and see waht I could do.
So I decided to go back to a method I had tried and enjoyed: transfering a magazine image using acrylic mediums onto watercolour paper. The first step is coating the image with gloss acrylic medium five times, drying after each coat and drying overnight when these coats are finished. Here is what it looks like:
Then I made a mistake. It is typical of me, at some point in my day, to try to do five things at once even though I actually like focusing. I was waiting for the above image to dry and in the meantime I was cutting up old Christmas cards so that I could use things for collage. I was also doing something in the kitchen and checking my phone messages.
So I accidently jumped a step, which was to soak the image and rub off the paper backing. Instead I coated my watercolour paper in matte acrylic medium and stuck my image on. Then I realized with much self-frustration that I had made an error. I had a few moments of disappointment where I thought I had to scrap the whole thing. But then I asked myself, what can I do with this now? I peeled up the image before it stuck to the watercolour paper and turned it around (image side up) and made it a base for the collage.
Then I started playing….here is the art piece at different stages:
I played with adding bits of mesh from my potato and yam bags and painting over them. I used stencils and added a picture of a flower I had taken. It is a messy and imperfect piece but felt like a true attempt at doing something new and it gave me pleasure and a boost and excitement for further explorations.
It was therapeutic for me on a lot of different levels: it was joyful and exciting while the tactile nature of making it was also calming and regulating. But perhaps the most important insight was that I had made a mistake, felt disappointed and frustrated, then forged ahead and attempted something different than my original expectations.
Therapeutic Art Making Parallels Recovery
I can’t count how many times I have had to pivot in my mental health recovery. And it was sometimes so, so, so very hard. It is very painful to work so hard, have an episode and pick up life again. An important ingredient in this process is self-love. It is getting over self-criticisms, and internalized stigma. Sometimes it’s moving from a stuck place and making small steps forward. Sometimes it’s accepting our imperfections and figuring out how to go forward anyway. It’s transcending self-doubt and shame and not giving up. Therapeutic art making a a great way to practice this process.
Over the years, I have thrown so many pieces of creativity out because it wasn’t up to my standards. I even did that with part a novel that I had written. I didn’t see that value in what I was learning from its imperfections.
We are all imperfect. Our mental health recovery journey is more like a rollercoaster than a straight stretch of highway. The art process this last week showed me that mistakes can lead to something new, to good feelings and towards creative energy.
So the process of creating a product, experimenting and learning new techniques is therapeutic. The piece was created allowing somthing new to unfold and allowing the light of my excitement to keep burning even when I thought I might give up on the project.
Reflection
In art making, in mental health recovery, life is not a tidy narractive where all the boxes are checked. Both are messy, with endings, failures, mistakes, misteps, imperfections, feelings of inadequacy. And in response we need to be kind to ourselves, and persistent, allowing ourselves to grow/learn/accept (whichever word fits today). I could have scraped the project and sometimes that is what we need in art or life but if I had stopped the project, a little bit of the light I have towards creating might have dimmed.
Allow your imperfections and see what they offer you. You might be surprised💜💜💜
with kindness and care, Meegan
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