Art & Grief

Art Skills Not Required

Do art and grief ever cross paths? What about art and anxiety, stress, depression, frustration, etc.? Art is often overlooked as a means to work through tough times.

Though I’ve never officially had an art therapy session, this collage of X-Men (© Marvel) characters was one I drew for a therapist who wasn’t quite understanding the intensity of the emotions I was feeling. The drawing proved most effective.

It can be rather effective especially in art therapy sessions run by a licensed therapist. Even if you don’t have access to an art therapist, you can still use art to work through your emotions. It doesn’t even matter if you’re artistically inclined or not. In fact, most people who are in art therapy are not artists.

It’s not about making masterpieces.

It’s about working out grief, anger, frustration, or anything else you might be experiencing. Art and grief might look like a Jackson Pollock with splattered paint covering a canvas edge to edge. It could also be scrawled Sharpie in a sketchbook.

The very act of getting your emotions out of your head and physically onto a canvas of some sort, is therapeutic all on its own. This is the basic principle of therapy. Expressing your emotions rather than bottling them up. Regular therapy patients express themselves verbally. Art therapy patients express themselves by getting things out on a canvas.

This is useful in cases where the patient is unable to express themselves verbally.