Expressive Art

The continual struggle for me in class is to remember one very important thing...We are NOT to approach these sessions like other art classes. We will be trained to engage in artistic expression-which can be quite abstract. The goal is NOT a great painting of trees and landscapes, fruit or buildings.

Participants are purposely given a very limited time to execute a painting This is done so we less tempted to over think, or critically scrutinize our compositions. As we abandon our need to control the outcome of a painting, we allow the colors, shapes and strokes to speak for themselves.

Art4Healing Facilitators use a specific method to carefully walk each participant through this process. There are many steps, which come in the form of questions. Each participants answers these questions using colors and shapes....not words or images. It's spontaneous. It sounds crazy, but it is surprising how our sub-conscience will respond if allowed, if we are willing to release control and surrender to the process. Very eye opening. The results can be dynamic and bring a lot of clarity to our thoughts, fears, memories and aspirations

Assignment- "The Incredible Shrinking Machine"

The questions and prompts from our instructor takes us on an unexpected journey inside ourself. First stop, our head/mind .....AUUgh! That seems sort of scary to me especially since I have been under so much stress! My instructor reminds us not to panic, be completely honest and respond quickly, using only two colors. For the next hour, each student was guided on an adventure-using specific questions and prompts we traveled from place to place, exploring and documenting with colors and shapes what was tucked inside of us. Our hurts, our joys...things that we never felt safe enough to express were showing up in our paintings! It was powerful.

Observation: In the picture below in the right corner there is darkness from a painful memory, but notice it isn't taking up much space. In fact the white paint around that area was a response to the question of forgiveness. Notice where the white paint is placed on the canvas.

The purple squares are a sense of destiny, important things I've learned through life, but I'm not sure how God is using them. How is He connecting them all together? Blue swirly lines can be seen trying to connect some of the squares.

The tangerine and yellow color speaks of joy, reaching into all directions of the canvas. The strong sweeping upward stokes-reflect hope....and so on. You get the idea I'm sure. When our paintings are complete, we spend a significant amount of time in class discussing and sharing what we gained from the assignment. It is a very enlightening process.