Art, Wellness and Mental Health
These three topics play off each other and affect each other all the time. As a person who has struggled for over 20 years with a chronic illness, art has definitely played a role in where my life is today.
As I struggled to learn to paint over 20 years ago, I vowed that if I ever did get “IT” I would teach any beginner who wanted to learn and I have worked on that nearly every day for the last 12 years or so. Somedays I feel nearly consumed more by that than actually creating my own art.
I love seeing the light come on when someone starts to get a particular concept. I get almost as excited as they do.
There is so much to learn as an artist and it can’t be learned over night. The concepts can be learned relatively quickly, but putting them into practice and actually using them in your art takes time. And the frustrating thing is, there is no substitute for that practice time. The brush must become part of your hand. That only happens over time.
Back to wellness and mental health and art. Expressing your creativity, regardless of the genre, does something inside your brain. I’m not a brain doctor, but I have a chronic illness that waxes and wanes and when I’m having a flare up, painting totally takes me away from that.
Several hours will pass and I won’t have thought about how I feel. My brain shifts over to things like; where does the next stroke go, what is the color I’m seeing, where is the highlight, how dark is that shadow.
I’m not saying, creating art will heal you of your illness, but what I am saying is it can be a tool in your tool belt to have an interesting and fulfilled life even with a debilitating illness.
My favorite artist is Claude Monet and one of the reasons is his softness in his art. I love his impressionistic style. But, I also love the fact that he painted right up til the day he died and he had arthritis so bad he had to have the brushes strapped to his hand in order to paint. I want to be that. He was driven to paint and nothing was going to stop that including not being able to pick up a brush.
Grandma Moses started painting at the age of 76 because she could no longer quilt because of her arthritis. She turned to painting as her creative outlet because she could hold a brush.
We all have creativity baked into our DNA. It’s in how we cook, how we decorate our homes, the clothes we wear and on and on and on. Allowing that creativity to come out and flourish in any of its many forms, can give us a release from the stresses of a chronic illness that we may not find in any other way.
I hope you’re going to believe in your own creativity and let it help you through the stresses and illnesses of life that affect us all. You’re creating a way to cope and beautiful art or a lovely life in the process.
Hope you enjoyed this and that it’s opened up a thought process that will help you recognize your own creativity and how it can help in your life.
Sincerely,
Sharon