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Art Therapy
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Message
Posted
I come from reading the excellent blog on Mindfulness and Art by Lancelot Clark which seems to sum up a great deal of what art can mean to us painters.
There seems to have grown up a whole field of endeavour called Art Therapy. Having heard about this I tried to do a little research on the subject and what I read confirmed what I thought about it when I heard someone talking about how much good they found a few sessions did for their self-esteem, their account sounded like the sort of splashing on of paint for it's own sake, it made Jackson Pollock sound very intellectual.
Looking it up confirmed me in my thoughts that everybody reckoned it to be a better invention than sliced bread.
To me it seemed that the sort of things this forum were concerned about seemed to play little part in the practice of the therapy. The greater part seemed to be inward looking and the study of the individuals state of mind and very little if anything to do with mastering the skills or techniques associated with painting.
It seemed particularly designed from the psychotherapists point of view, concentrating mainly on the traumas and the mental conditions of the people doing it. It is certainly a growing impetus in pschotherapy. Apparently a good career path for some.
I found a fairly exhaustive account of the practical side of this on: This Web Page I'd be interested to hear the views of the forum on this.
John
Posted
I would of course need to go and read this properly, but can't do that this afternoon.
As an immediate reaction - which is not always the most useful - art therapy is a very specific discipline that may have to do with the creation of art for its own sake, but hasn't necessarily. People in old people's homes, psychiatric wards, prisons, are encouraged to express themselves creatively and to play with paint - or with other things - as a means of helping them lose their immediate problems and generally feeling better. That may be a small part of what artists do anyway, but it isn't the whole reason or generally a significant one - it's something like the practice of Yoga: you can go deeply into that and study it from a philosophical point of view, or you can just practise the moves to help you relax. It may seem to be the same thing, and on a very superficial level it is, but the latter has almost nothing to do with the former.
This doesn't mean that someone who takes up painting for relaxation alone might not find it becoming an absorbing interest that leaves their initial reasons for doing it far behind, to the extent that they move beyond immediately rewarding techniques, as it might be of the Bob Ross school; they would then begin to discover that as well as being rewarding and absorbing, painting can also be fantastically frustrating and difficult.
Posted
Like Robert I haven't read the article in depth, and I can only go on what I have experienced in the broad sense of art therapy. Some forum members know that in July 2015 I had a stroke, glad to say I made an excellent recovery. However, during my stay in hospital I was asked by the Occupationl Therapist if I had any hobbies, to which I replied "I used to paint". So I took up painting again after a ten year break. And the rest is history so they say.
Last year my husband took me along to The Stroke Association Assembly. Various workshops were held where stroke survivors could speak about their experiences of life after stroke, it put a lot of demons to bed for me. Also there was an artist encouraging stroke survivors with varying degrees of disability to pick up a brush and "give art a go". She was from Birmingham and she told me that art was proven to help with stroke survivors. Andrew Marr from the BBC started painting after his stroke, having never painted in his life before. He was said to have been helped trendously through art.
I've always loved painting but I feel it means so much more to me now. I'm willing to try anything different and sometimes try things out of my comfort zone, which I would not have entertained before. So for me, art therapy or getting back into art put me on the road to recovery.
Ellen
Posted
Like Music Therapy and Drama Therapy (both 2-year Masters degree courses) I'm sure Art Therapy has nothing to do with teaching people to draw/ paint/ sculpt, but uses Art as the way of getting people to deal with their problems/ face their demons/ express themselves.
I was on the Music Services Tutor register in the next county up from here for a couple of years, and I'd looked at Music Therapy as a possible career path some years back. On one of the INSET days I went to, I gate-crashed the Music Therapists' Jam Session -
- You do not want to spend time in the same room as these people; all socially inept, none of them were remotely interested in music except as a tool to fulfil their role and I abandoned on the spot any idea of looking at Music Therapy as any sort of career as I simply did not want to end up like one of them. I suspect Art Therapists are much the same
Edited
by alang23
Posted
Alan puts more bluntly what I hinted at, I think! I'm sure that art therapy helps some people recovering from serious illness, physical or mental, but I've seen (and heard) some of it too. My local hospital runs several courses, and somewhere (ie, I've lost it....) I have a CD-rom of some of their activities and the thinking behind them; I do find a lot of it superficial, but then I probably would - I've never painted for therapeutic reasons: sometimes painting has made me feel better, just as often it's made me want to tear my hair out by the roots and eat it... I'm afraid I'm reminded of a remark by one of the Chapman brothers - some of this work is Prozac in paint.
I don't really agree with that, other than in entirely artistic terms, but those were the terms in which he was thinking.... something like 'all very nice, glad if it makes people feel better, but it hasn't much to do with art'. (He was particularly down on rather ubiquitous paintings of tigers at the time.)
Still, one can analyse too much - that's how it strikes me, and Alang, I think, but art therapy does do some people good, and if it does I'm certainly not going to knock it. But I will say there's a difference between what I think most of us try to do, and art therapy. I suspect that Ellen found it useful as it got her back into what she had loved to do before (life of course tends to get in the way of our arty interests). She probably got more out of it than I'm suggesting here, and crucially she carried on painting after release from hospital. So it's not a simple phenomenon by any means.
Finally though - I have a friend in hospital at the moment, who is encouraged to take part in singing sessions of the "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain" variety: volunteers come in and sing away, while the patients join in - or don't. Some - from what I've seen of it, mostly visitors - join in with gusto. My friend however, a lady of firm opinions, muttered that she'd never sung this sort of stuff when she was well, and had no desire even to hear it now she's ill. Which probably means no more than that you can't please everyone, whatever you do; and that my friends tend to be independently minded, or perishing awkward, depending on point of view.
Posted
I've read the article/blog now - and suggest others do, too - or as much of it as I felt like taking in, given I got a bit annoyed by the introspective element of it: this IS about therapy, and not much else; it's very much of the 'anyone can paint/draw' school: which is OK, if you want to believe it and it helps, and you think it's all about self-expression - but I just don't think it's why most of us paint; perhaps I assume too much, but it certainly isn't why I paint.
Boundaries get blurred, don't they.....? Every time one of us says something to the effect that you can't be worried about anything else when you're painting - which is generally true, although 'can't' is asking for contradiction - we're yielding a little ground to the therapeutic nature of art as if that were the main reason for indulging in it.
I know some of us get impatient with this sort of theorizing, so I shall pack it in: but no, art isn't therapy, though therapy might take the form of art. Howzat?
Posted
Creativity is, for me, the best therapy. One thing I have never been able to stomach, nor ever will, is counselling or team activities. Discussing my personal issues with others - no never - just give me a set of tools, a pen, or some brushes and I can lose myself with plenty of thinking time to sort myself out.
Posted
I think I know your friend in hospital RJ and can imagine her reactions.
As for mind fullness, it's trendy word and having tried it because I was told it would help, never got into it, but I have little time for these modern things.
As for the therapy aspect, like Lilysnana, it helped me greatly in hospital to use my sketch book on the therapists suggestions of hobbies etc.