A beginners guide to Art Therapy
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is a technique of creative expression that aims to help people heal and feel better.
Art therapy helps people explore their emotions, develop self-awareness, cope with stress, boost self-esteem, and work on social skills. This can provide personal insight and develop new coping mechanisms.
If you are new to the concept of Art Therapy, below is a beginners guide that I hope you will find useful.
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Who can benefit from Art Therapy?
Who can benefit from Art Therapy?
Anyone has the potential to benefit from art therapy, although it won’t necessarily be for everyone and there are various other forms of therapy to explore to suit an individual’s needs.
Art therapy can be a powerful form of therapy that is suitable for all ages from very young children to adults to the elderly. It can be particularly helpful for individuals who have had to face challenging issues in their lives, such as, emotional, behavioural, or mental health issues, learning or physical disabilities, life-threatening illnesses, neurological conditions, and physical ailments or to help with the trauma of grief.
Art therapy does not require artistic ability, yet it can be a deeply healing process.
If someone thinks that art therapy may benefit them, I would recommend seeking the advice of a professional therapist.
My Art Therapy Journey
*Trigger Warning - Content relating to baby loss*
For a long time I have felt that creating artwork can be beneficial to a person's mental health. When I was at university, I worked with young people at a local school, talking about emotions and encouraging them to make artwork that could capture their feelings. However, it wasn’t until 2014, when I went through a period of intense personal trauma that my instincts drew me to creating artwork as a coping mechanism and became a form of therapy that has continued through to today.
In 2014, I was pregnant with my second daughter. I was a week past my due date when labour started. During labour, I experienced a huge amount of blood loss. After being rushed to hospital for an emergency caesarean, a number of hugely traumatic hours later, we were informed that our daughter had died. It was a tremendous shock and our world came crashing down around us. Even in those early days, I would see vivid images that I wanted to draw, but at that time, I didn’t have the strength to put pen to paper. This was my first experience of true gut-wrenching grief and I realised how physical grief is, how your heart truly aches and I felt a pressure in my stomach that made me feel as if I would never be able to stand up straight again. As the months passed, I started to make notes and sketches of my thoughts and feelings. It was a very instinctive process and became therapeutic for me. I also started practising yoga more regularly and I seem to tap into the same part of my mind when I’m practising yoga or creating artwork, they now go hand in hand for me and make me feel closer to my daughter who passed away. On the flip side of this, I now have two other daughters who enjoy creating artwork, in the way that many children do, and we regularly do arts and crafts together. It’s something that I have made a conscious effort to foster and I strongly believe it brings us closer together as a family.
From this very intuitive place, creating artwork is now a central part of my life and the life of my family and has led me to look into Art Therapy in more detail.
Art Therapy at Home
As mentioned above, the guidance of a trained therapist should be sought when exploring art therapy to ensure that the techniques are used to treat specific conditions. However, there are a number of ways art can be used at home to alleviate stress and foster a positive sense of well-being and mindfulness. Such techniques could include:
Simple Circles - You only need a pen or pencil and something to draw on. Begin by slowly drawing a small circle on the page, making sure to complete the circle. Then repeat this process multiple times, using larger and smaller circles, allowing them to join each other on the page or perhaps even exploring with spiral shapes. Each time, taking it slowly.
Scribble Drawing – You only need a piece of paper and a pen, pencil or crayon. These materials can be adapted, as preferred. This technique involves closing your eyes and simply scribbling over the paper. This process can be repeated using different colours and once completed could be taken further by creating an image within the scribble or colouring in the different shapes.
Creating collages from your own paintings - Use any paints that are available to you, and any paper, cardboard or other material to create a picture. Once your picture is complete, cut it or rip it up into shapes of your choice, e.g. stripes or squares or simply torn pieces of any size. Then use the parts of the original piece to explore and create a collage as a new piece of art.
Body prints - Only paints and paper are required in this exercise - no brushes are needed. The object of this exercise is to use a part of your body to create an art piece. This could be your hand, fingers, finger nails, toes, feet - any part of the body can be used. Then use the shapes of your body to create a truly unique artwork.
Bubble painting - For this exercise, you will need washing up liquid, paint, cups, straws and paper. Mix the paint and washing liquid in a cup and then blow bubbles through a straw. Lay some paper over the bubbles to create an imprint and repeat multiple times with different colours. Perhaps also pour paint/bubbles on the paper and use the straw to blow or move the paint around and explore different shapes. You could explore mood colours to express your feelings.
There are many other techniques that could be followed, and a qualified art therapist will be able to assist with this.
Finding an Art Therapist Where you Live
To find a qualified art therapist in the UK, search the The British Association of Art Therapists’ (BAAT) directory for qualified practitioners - https://www.baat.org/
To find a qualified art therapist in the US, search the The American Art Therapy Association’s (AATA) directory for healthcare professionals - https://arttherapy.org/
To find a qualified art therapist in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia/Pacific region, search the the Australian, New Zealand and Asian Creative Arts Therapies Association’s (ANZACATA) directory - https://www.anzacata.org/
To find a qualified art therapist in Canada, search the Canadian Art Therapy Association’s (CATA) art therapy directory - https://www.canadianarttherapy.org/
Useful Reading
All the information above is written from the perspective of creating artwork as a form of therapy. It is also possible to think about viewing artwork as form of therapy. To look into this in more detail, I would recommend the book ‘Art as Therapy’ by Alain de Botton.
The objective of Alain de Botton's book is to provide a new way of looking at art as a type of therapy. It explores a number of works of art from various eras and genres in order to use them as tools for resolving difficult personal challenges and issues found in modern life. This is an accessible book that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Details in this blog do not constitute professional Art Therapy advice. All Art Therapy techniques should be used by qualified therapists according to their education and training.
