The Intersections of Art & Wellbeing: Clarity, Imagination & Connection

Artmaking has been with me since I was a child. But it was while I was doing my visual arts degree in uni that I found art to be the place where I can articulate the unseen parts of who I was. Parts that I didn’t have language for.

I remember having a project where we needed to visually represent a song, and my choice was ‘What if God was one of us’ by Joan Osbourne. No one really knew it where I was growing up – which probably made it even more appealing for me – but it asked questions I was exploring.

And I remember my tutor at the time looking at my images, and just as I was about to explain them to him, he said ‘I know exactly what you’re trying to say here’.  And that moment stuck with me because I was so clear about my experience, that he saw it too. It was undeniable and non-negotiable.

I realised art is where I meet myself. It’s where I meet all of my selves.

Through art-making I was able to honestly listen to what this moment demands of me. To listen deeply on a physical, emotional and spiritual level.
It’s this clarity that I chase in the art-making process. 

Not everything I create and communicate will be beautiful, in the literal sense, because not everything I experience is beautiful. If anything, I find the art therapy process to be expansive in how it acknowledges our complexities, our nuances and how it holds space for those parts of us to breathe. 

I love Coldplay’s lyric ‘I’d rather be a comma than a full stop’, because it acknowledges the transitions, to who I’m becoming in any given moment. Seeking clarity about who we are in any given moment has become an important intention of mine in the work I do with others.

The way I see it:

When you gain a clearer sense of self  >  you can state what you’re experiencing  >  you can state what you need  >  you can re-imagine what you need to create and live a fuller life.

Imagination is not inconsequential.
It shapes movements. It shapes wars. It shapes economies. It shapes how we meet in the digital world. 

It’s the creative act of constructing a different way of being. We are now - as adrienne maree brown powerfully states - living in someone else’s imagination, in other people’s creative acts - constructive or destructive. Imagination requires hard work, an acknowledgment of what might be - and what might not be - possible. But I find it so important in working towards our wellbeing.

When we reimagine a self that is closer to who we want to be in the world, and reclaim what was once consumed by shame or guilt and that is one of the biggest leaps towards bringing healing into our spaces. I say space-S, because something I realised was that our healing isn’t just about ourselves.

People always ask me ‘Why do you focus so much on relationships?’ 
And my answer is: Our healing is connected to the healing of others.

My healing is connected to the healing of my parents and my grandparents. The healing of a marriage is connected to the healing of each partner. The healing of a community is connected to the healing of its leaders, it’s community workers and individuals.  

When we imagine what healing, clarity and wholeness is possible for ourselves, we can imagine what healing, clarity and wholeness is possible in our partnerships, our families, our friendships, and communities. Our internal health is linked to the external. When we strengthen ourselves and our communities, we would be better equipped to tackle unhealthy existing structures and systems.

In my experience, art: the visual, the spoken, the written, the performed, 

• is a means to get these moments of clarity about what we might need for our healing, 

• to help us move towards reimagining the relationships we want with ourselves

• and to reimagine our connections with others and with the collective systems we’re in.

That’s what I’m hoping to bring to the table…

Wellness in the Unwellness

The class assignment was set.
A wall with 2 parts to it. One titled ‘Wellness’, the other ‘Un-wellness’. The task was for us to visually represent what each of these meant on a sheet of paper and stick it under its corresponding title. It seemed straight forward enough.

Only when I touched the paper did it become clear to me:
This is a false binary.

I remember so vividly how my body immediately signaled to me these states of being are not separate. I took both pieces of paper and nestled them within each other.

There is wellness in the unwellness.
The search for what is already well within me in times of dis-ease. The questions that were birthed. The growing that was seeded. The words that found voice. The constellations of clarity against what needed to fade away.

There is unwellness in the wellness.
The recognition of what happened. The traces. The disbeliefs that accompanied new beliefs. The ungraceful changes. The inconvenient truths. The growing pains. My altered shape coming out of where I was, into the next step.

My experience of wellness / unwellness was: Symbiotic. Collaborative. Communicative. Responding to. Back and forth. Light and shadow. Angular. Laced with.

One side of the wall wasn’t enough to hold my experience.

When We Disappear

I recently worked with participants processing experiences of racism in the workplace, and here’s something I noticed we - myself included - do in such uncomfortable situations:

We make ourselves disappear.

• When we over-function to prove our worth and competence, we disappear.

• When we contort and shrink our bodies to brush off an inappropriate comment, we disappear.

• When we stand in the corner of the room at an event to scan bodies and stares we disappear.

• When we trap our anger in our breath to avoid being ‘confrontational’ or ‘difficult’, we disappear.
  

When I disappear - for the comfort of the other - they remain fully intact,
while I’m now left to tend to my body and the harm that has landed upon it yet again. 

What can grow for us when we:

• Stop apologising for the discomfort felt by the other when we bring up our own truth? 

• Walk a little slower and more fully in our bodies to reclaim space, time and energy because: we deserve to be here.

• Reflect the burden back to the other person for them to self-educate and do better - rather than us always reconfiguring ourselves?

In the Spaces of Shame & Guilt

Reclaiming a space once consumed by shame or guilt is one of the biggest leaps into reimagining a self that aligns with how you want to be in the world.

To resolve conflict.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To rebuild a relationship.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To repair self-talk.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To show yourself to those closest to you.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As part of a teaching demo by my tutors, I revealed the inner works of a relationship so intimate to a room full of colleagues. I knew when I volunteered that I needed to set the shame, guilt, and concerns of 'people talk' that riddled my thoughts aside.
'What will they say about me? What will they think about my relationship? About the 'other' in the relationship? About my upbringing? About my culture?’

It was a shaky moment stepping into full view so willingly, but it was necessary and memorable. As I stepped into the spotlight I also stepped into a strength I didn't know I had at the time.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

My desire to deconstruct and reimagine this relationship had become far more amplified than any concerns that had previously suffocated the relationship from breathing and thriving. And bullied me from doing the same.

'And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.' - Anais Nin

What might grow for you in the spaces taken over by guilt and shame?⠀

There's No Map for this Place

'Memory is often a hindrance to creative experience.'
- Abraham Joshua Heschel

It's always necessary to encourage participants in my sessions to go beyond their usual patterns and behaviours, and to honestly listen to what this moment really demands of them. 

To listen deeply on a physical and emotional level, and how they each inform the choices in their artwork.

Not only can memory hijack our creative experience in the art making process. But also in the imagination of seeing ourselves, and others, differently and more expansively. Beyond the narrow narratives we have defaulted to ourselves. That we can move through an experience with more imagination - and a little rebellion - than we dared.

It’s hard work to go beyond the contours of what's most familiar to you. And it can be damn scary sometimes to dip into what you are capable of.

I get chills every time I see someone push against the edges of their known self.

I'm not going to lie though, I also get a little scared because now we're both in this new territory together and well... There's no map for this place.