Creative Wisdoms
art as a healing pathway
Images & Stories of Healing Art
Marge (Continued)
After doing some lecture and warm up exercises, I often ask my students to think of a situation in their lives that they felt needed healing energy. They write down their intentions and I begin to lead them through my process for creating intuitive paintings.
"Marge" was a student in one of my classes at Chautauqua Institution. She looked tired and fragile on some level, but was clearly engaged in her life. She sat quietly & attentively through the classes, but she had not shared her situation with me or the class at this point.
During our intuitive painting exercise, she began to paint a large red circle in the center of her canvas, and kept painting the red area over and over. As I walked around the room, I noticed she was stuck.
"Everyone else is just painting and I don't know what to do next," she said.
I suggested that she speak to her painting, and ask it what it needed her to do. She tried but said she felt consumed by the red space in the middle and didn't see anything else. This insight seemed important and I encouraged her to explore it further.
As we talked more about this feeling she was having, I noticed a slight shift in her facial expression and her body. I intuitively felt that this red space DID represent her issue, and now it was up to her if she wanted to bring a healing image to it.
I asked if I could use her as an example for the class. She agreed and I asked her to stand up. I felt she was very connected with her body, and that her intuition was connected to movement and touch. I had her hold two brushes, one in each hand, and told her to look with compassion at her image -- to notice what her body wanted to do to the painting.
It only took a few seconds and she made a motion in the air with her left
hand and then her right. She was making half circles in the air, moving from
the center outward. She knew that was what the painting wanted her to do, so
she sat back down, added paint to the brushes and began making these marks
on the surface.
When she was done, everyone in the room commented on how much her face had changed. Color shone in her cheeks, her eyes were brighter, her shoulders lighter. She then shared with us that she had been taking care of her husband 24 hours a day for several years. This was the first vacation she was taking for herself, and she felt guilty. She alternately struggled with feelings of anger and compassion for her husband. She realized that the red area was her heart, and she felt her anger was balled up there. When she added the colorful strokes outward from her heart, she felt she was releasing the anger.
Marge still had to go home and do all the hard work and continue to process her life, but she had made a huge step towards healing for herself and her family that day. She also realized that she had the power to move and change the emotional energy within herself.