Processing Emotional Pain through Creating Art
This is the fourth post in the series of Processing Emotional Pain. Many people find comfort in processing their pain through art – dance, paint, pen, words, film. Each medium can provide a cathartic release and expression of pain.
Photography is the medium I myself choose to use most often, followed by words, and then by doodles.
This is what I call “falling” – that uncontrollable tumble into despair that feels like you will just keep falling. But notice that the Holy Spirit is right there with me in hot pursuit! Even in my falling I’m not alone.
In Sharon Garlough Brown’s book, Shades of Light, Wren, the main character, is a painter who identifies deeply with Vincent Van Gogh. She often contemplated the painter as she herself painted and processed her emotions. Here is a scene which particularly spoke to me:
“Vincent knew. He understood. He was a companion in the darkness. She mixed the blue with a bit of violet until it was almost black. Then she spread the gloom onto the canvas with thick impasto strokes, sculpting the dark into shadowy mountains and caverns. Strokes of contrasting yellow would brighten the sky, but she didn’t want it brightened. The purple darkness soothed her.”
Art is not simply for creating clever and beautiful things, it is also for expressing and exposing truth “the sacred truth of our experience as it is, not how we want it to be.” -Christine Vaulters Paintner in The Artist’s Rule.
Pablo Picasso stated well that “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” I would say the same for any of the arts, really.
Catherine Anderson in The Creative Photographer says:
“Your images reveal to others who you are. They also reveal you to yourself.”
This is an image I’ve shared various times, and also made it into the book I co-authored with Kathleen (Messages from God: An Illuminated Devotional). It was my picture of grief and hope shortly after my Mom died and speaks to me of death and life and resurrection and irrepressible hope. I’m grateful beyond words that I was able to see and capture this because it has comforted me and many others over the years.
Julia Cameron share the following in The Artist’s Way:
“Art may seem to spring from pain, but perhaps that is because pain serves to focus our attention onto details (for instance, the excruciatingly beautiful curve of a lost lover’s neck). Art may seem to involve broad strokes, grand schemes, great plans. But it is the attention to detail that stays with us; the singular image is what haunts us and becomes art. Even in the midst of pain, this singular image brings delight. The artist who tells you different is lying.”
The leaf image above is my singular image, and likely will be for my life. I hope you have the opportunity in your life to create a “singular image” – that piece of work that so captures your emotions at the time that it brings delight.
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