Staycation Art #10: Catharsis and Emotional Transformation through Drawing

One of the gifts of a creative practice is the ability for art to embrace and transform whatever emotional state you bring to it.

It has not been a good week here in the United States. We need to fully feel the sadness and whatever else we are experiencing in and around ourselves. The good news is that your art practice can handle it – it can hold the space for you to experience and express it.

You can use your pencil and paper to find healing and relief in difficult times.

This week I struggled to make your art lesson because my heart was knotted. Then I saw the view and my heart opened up with a WHOOSH. I was certain that drawing that landscape would fill me with peace and joy. I could transform my day while embracing my heartache. And that, I knew, was the lesson needed – the one I had prepared could wait.

This week the assignment is to draw from nature.

Find something natural that you can draw from life – preferably a landscape. You will be attracted to the imagery that speaks to you. Something out there will help to soothe your soul without any need to shove aside your feelings. Find that thing and draw your heart out! Bring your sadness or anger or whatever you are feeling. You are not looking for an image that mirrors your emotional experience. Whatever you choose will miraculously begin to reflect your emotions back to you transformed.

It isn’t relevant that anyone else can pick up on what your state was as you drew, or even that you get that particular feeling reflected back. Each person will see their own image in your work. And your mood will change as you work.

Bring it on emotionally. Whatever you are feeling can be expressed through art. You don’t need to find words for the way you feel to express and transform them.

Sit with your authentic response to current events. Pick up your pencil and draw from your heart. I’m endlessly amazed that the landscape is always there to absorb and cleanse me as I work.

Pour it all out simply by concentrating on the form and space before you. Sit in front of your subject with naked emotion. Begin to draw. Identify with your subject as deeply as you can. Get in there and explore the rhythms. Travel through the space represented.

Don’t judge your drawing.