Photo by Bekah Russom on Unsplash
We’ve come to the end of the series exploring the life benefits of creative arts. I know I’ve missed some, but there are so many!
I’m ending with what I think is the best benefit – that self-expressive art allows us a deeper view into our own self.
There’s the wow-I-didn’t-think-I-could-do-that revelation, and that’s great of course, especially if the results exceeded your standard of excellence (and it rarely, if ever does, we being our harshest critic), and you called it “finished.” Often, the idea isn’t to make a masterpiece; it’s about the creative process.
But doing your art, in whatever medium you choose, dredges up old, buried sediment. My #1 way to keep my mental pond dredged and clean is by writing. It’s not for publication, but my private journals. I’ve made a habit of writing by hand every single night for the past 16 years — and wish I had started doing is sooner. It’s simply for the act of doing it. It frames my day, puts it to bed, and allows me to start the next day fresh. Most importantly, it’s basically a landfill of things I don’t want to carry into tomorrow. And my goodness – the things that come out on paper that I wasn’t even aware of. (It’s also a great way to have a conversation with yourself to get answers. Crazy, but it works!)
The key is in not censoring your work. Unless your goal is to create gallery- or theater-worthy art, or you’re doing it for commercial purposes (to please your customers), or learning technique, of course. Sometimes you just want to make something that you consider beautiful, to your standards.
What comes out and up? What happens when a pond is dredged, especially for the first time, probably because it was filled with more silt than water. Decades of old tires, sunken rowboats, decayed and smelly stuff (it always stinks!), a car (I don’t know, there’s always a car!), skeletons of animals, a dead body (wait, WHAT???). The stuff we hide down there in our dark recesses – amazing!
It needs courage, especially if past traumas come up. Don’t judge yourself!! Keep an attitude of well, that’s interesting……. nobody else needs to know. Sometimes you’ll have to deal with things that should have been addressed when they happened, but got shoved down out of sight. Like a child who doesn’t talk about it, but draws graphic and violent pictures in art class. Whoa….what’s going on here? Be compassionate in the process.
PS…my writing is so much easier done first thing in the morning, 5:30 or so, while the light appears and my cat sits in the window waiting for the sun, and my parakeet is quiet. Some mornings I feel like a lie-in and then I’ve lost my writing time.
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