Art as Healer - Getting Through Tough Times With Art

Art as Healer. You've heard about it a lot. Therapists use art to help kids and adults process their feelings and difficult emotions. It's a safe place to act out and process our emotions - happy, sad, fearful, angry, frustrated, loving, caring and peaceful. If you can feel it, art can help you deal with it, get used to it or just plain outgrow it. In some cases, invite in more of the same. It's a powerful mix - so tread carefully.

Plein air painting (painting outdoors in Nature) in particular has a double benefit - you get the healing properties of art combined with that of being out in Nature. What could be better than that?

Standing at our easels out in nature, we are a part of the whole circle of life - we are the witness and recorder of nature's light show, of the seasons' passing. Life and death - start a painting, finish a painting. Moving on to the next thing.

Wildlife comes and goes as we paint and still we stand there, brush in hand, present in the here and now. Following our intuition about composition, color and value. Following no laid out plan, but rather, acting in accordance with our inner voice - not critiquing ourselves, just honoring what feels right in that moment.

This intense focus allows us to blot out sadness and pain. All else is forgotten in this experience of flow and creative energy. Sounds disappear, hours feel like minutes. What a gift we have in our grasp - we just have to accept it and rejoice - try to go there as much as we can. We will feel renewed and reborn - become a better self for all of it.

I've had my say - how about sharing what you have experienced with art as healer.....

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