Art therapy and art making: A process of discovery
Early in my art therapy career, I asked a mentor how long it would take to be a "good" therapist. She laughed and rolled her eyes a little bit, as my question in itself negated what "good" therapy truly is. For therapists and therapy patients alike, we are all constantly evolving, changing, and in flux. You cannot always plan what growth or therapy will look like, but if you work hard and trust in the process, you will create something beautiful.
Good therapy greatly mimics the creative process and is both an art and a science. When I work on a painting, there are a lot of steps that go into it. What will my subject matter be? How do I want it to be laid out on the canvas? I will do a rough sketch, knowing that it will likely change a great deal throughout the process. Then comes mixing paint--it never ceases to amaze me how many colors go into a particular shade of green and how it quickly become more of a lime than the hunter green I am trying to achieve. Then when I apply the paint, I have to pick the brush that suits the size and type of mark that I want to make. How thin or thick should the stroke be? Should I thin the color out with turpentine or should I glob it on thick so it comes off of the canvas? Most of these decisions are done quickly and spontaneously, with little pause or conscious thought.
Throughout this process, there are times where I have fun, get excited, and feel confident. There are other times where I want to break the canvas in half and wonder what the hell I am doing.
So, too, in art therapy
In a single therapy session, there are so many decisions and possibilities. How do we begin? When new ideas come up, which do we follow and how? What feelings are present in the room and how do we acknowledge them?
Sometimes I have no idea how my therapy patients and I make the beautiful work that we do. Not because I don’t know what I am doing, but because of all of these small, split-second decisions and all of the little moments that make up our work. There is an art of therapy and before we know it, we have created a piece of artwork together, and it is simultaneously beautiful and hideous and very truly us.
