©Barbara Haviland Barb's Garden 2014
Saturday, May 21, 2016
McKinney Falls Plein Air Barbara Haviland BarbsGarden Texas Landscape Artist
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Art,Expression,and Self-Compassion- The Truth About "Art Therapy" by Helen Faye
Art, Expression, And Self-Compassion - The Truth About ‘Art Therapy’
You may have heard the term ‘art therapy’.
You may have rolled your eyes. It sounds like a hokey, hippie kind of
deal - ‘Art therapy’. How could splashing paints around or creating a
sculpture possibly help with a mental illness or mental trauma? Sure,
you can use those experiences to inform and create art - but art as a
tool for actually healing from them? Surely not.
In
fact, however, art is pretty well accepted in mental health circles as a
very valid and helpful method of getting through some pretty tough
things. Here’s how - and (as far as we know) why:
Art As Expression
If
you’re undergoing mental health problems, or finding it hard to process
trauma, the conventional therapeutic wisdom holds that you should
express your pain in order to process it. Old-timey ‘talking cures’ were
a method of self-expression through which the patient would
(theoretically) experience revelations about their state of being, and
work through their problems. However, talking and other forms of
expression aren’t always useful. For a start, we naturally put up
certain barriers, and apply certain faces when talking to others. We
can’t open up fully to someone else - particularly when (as is the case
with many who struggle with poor mental health) we cannot really open up
to ourselves. Art, however, gives many a medium by which to express
their thoughts, feelings, and emotions in a ‘safe’ format, free from
judgement, and free from the self-censorship which can come from human
communication. This in turn leads to revelation.
Art As Self-Comprehension
When
expressing oneself through art, one often finds oneself dragging things
one did not even know about oneself into the light. This can be a
sometimes disturbing process, but it’s always ultimately a worthwhile
one. Self-comprehension is essential if one is to develop self-compassion,
and self-compassion is in turn essential for healing from mental
trauma. While expressing our mental states through art, quite often we
find ourselves working our way through unexpected things. We may also
find the way we feel about those things changing. The self-expressive
art we make gives us a chance to step back and have a good look at
ourselves in a way which we best understand. It’s a ‘safe’ form of
self-learning which (again) does not necessarily open our souls to the
potentially poor understanding of others. Some believe that artistic
processes connect us to our subconscious mind,
in which the deepest parts of ourselves are stored. It is one thing to
be told by a psychoanalyst how you are feeling (and why). It is quite
another to reach that conclusion of your own volition, having been
taught by your own subconscious through the medium of art. Learning more
about how you are feeling and why gives you the psychological tools you
need to process trauma and to heal from mental illness. This is the
'breakthrough' any psychologist seeks, and it frequently works wonders
for many art therapy patients.
Art Promotes Good Mental Health Practices
Even
if you don’t buy into the idea that creating art, self-expression, and
self-comprehension are important and self-supporting phenomena, it
cannot be denied that art creation (and observation of art!) promotes
the kind of skills which are good for your mental health. Take landscape
painting, for example. In order to paint a landscape, one must learn to
focus. One must learn to observe in the moment, to be patient, to
persevere, and to pay attention to the world’s physical details rather
than drifting off onto potentially damaging thought-cycles. These kinds
of techniques mirror the ‘Mindfulness’ techniques currently all the
rage, which teach adherents to live ‘in the moment’ rather
than to be constantly worrying, through focus on current sensory
information. Mindfulness has been proven in various scientific settings
to have a tangible positive effect upon people’s stress levels and
general mental health. Viewing art can have the same kind of
‘mindfulness’ benefits - and there’s also evidence that looking at a
piece of art which affects us releases feel-good chemical dopamine in the brain.
This boosts our mood, promoting good mental health and resilience. All
in all, therefore, art is an absolutely fantastic form of therapy -
however you interact with it!
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Magnolias Barbara Haviland-BarbsGarden Texas Contemporary Artist
Magnolias
©Barbara Haviland-BarbsGarden
Magnolias is a commission I just finished and mailed. I love how they came out.. I do hope my client still loves them after seeing them in person. They are big..48"x22"
©Barbara Haviland Barb's Garden 2014
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