mcauleyhouseartists: Art Makes Us Strong

Monday, November 26, 2012

Art Makes Us Strong

David, collage artist

Now and then I like to visit the enormous flickr collection of art created by the many people that have participated in the art group. I'm always amazed and overwhelmed by all the energy, creativity, courage, and openness by all that have embraced the opportunity to sit with others and share in the art making process. Engaging in visual expression has been linked to enhanced self worth and identity through achievement, reduced stress, increased positive emotions, and decreased markers of emotional distress. It also results in a desire to continue in the healing process.

Creative expression can lead us to a deeper level of understanding and self-discovery. Cathy Salser, the Founder and Executive Director of A Window Between Worlds, an agency that was born from her vision to "share art in a way that makes a difference," describes creative expression as "the language that lives in the heart and the spirit. It's the language that emerges when you find the safety to really listen to your heart."

Art can be an oasis, a place to find relaxation and calm. It can also be used to release pain and unexpressed feelings. As we express and integrate unacknowledged feelings, we honor and integrate our whole selves. Creative expression can be both a way to find calm and a way to release pain, as the state of arousal that occurs as one achieves an emotional catharsis resolves in a state of relaxation once deeply held thoughts and feelings are released.

So here's to the power of art and all the courageous, amazing artists that gather together to share their creative vision with one another. KK

About the Art Program

5 Ways to Grow as an Artist

So how would a Cassatt or a Henri or Picasso approach painting differently than we do today? How might this heartfelt fear of others controlling our painting process impact our self-understanding as artists? Here are five possible answers:

1. Making a successful picture is not the goal. Think of periods, such as childhood, when we grew, our self-understanding changed and we became more of who we are. There was an endless stream of events where we expressed ourselves and slowly began to discover the things that pleased us. As with the sense of freedom characterized above, the entire payoff was growth. The events of life when we grow are the things that happen along the way. Making art should be exactly the same. Paintings are just the series of events or steps we take. Let them go. Keep moving. Or as Henri implored, “Keep living.”

2. The painting process is always a beginning. As soon as the freshness evaporates (we are bored or lost or acquire interest in something else), stop. Do not think in terms of finishing. Picasso lectures eloquently on this. Finish is the death of our work because it means we are painting an expectation or “to be like” and that puts the brakes on painting to see and feel more deeply. Every beginning is a new prompt, a new point of departure. Begin everything. Finish nothing.

3. Ignore non-artist authorities. Juries, the grantors, the gallery, the direction from above are just so many fingers in our pie. All external measures are dangerous because they not only push us to performing, as opposed to creating, but their sense of worth takes over our own. This is precisely what Parisian artists fought against.

4. Get into a prolonged creative process. Have dozens of paintings in your studio that have been abandoned for one reason or another, left in various stages, unfinished but always complete as expressions of who you were at that moment. Work on several paintings simultaneously. You are not making shoes.

5. Furnish the world with your beauty, let the world see, touch and feel who you are. Scary I know. It is so much easier to hide within safe fortresses, the sources of praise and dignity that we can count on by pleasing our audience. This is the dreaded condition called style. We cannot be free to be who we are if we are not always risking being who we are in front of others.