Marking Art Gratitude
Getting my studio space useable again has meant I can create again. At an artist's meet-up I help organize someone presented a project of a collaged light plate switch cover. Since I'd got my desk available, and have continued to improve the space, I was able to finish the project I began the very next day and install it in our practice room.
While I've not been writing as much, I've been creating pages in an artist's journal I began at the beginning of the year. My depression hits hard around the holidays, with the death anniversaries of all my parents falling within a few weeks of each other. My Mother's death anniversary is the day after Thanksgiving this year and this is the first year I'm coming into them without my studies to distract me. Having the ability to go make something artistic is really a helpful tool for me, especially when my energy feels too low to write.
Having weekly art therapy appointments this past month has helped me see how having this outlet is a big benefit to my healing. Art, as my friend SJ likes to say, helps us express what words cannot. Despite my skill as a writer, there are times when words fail me and the more I learn to turn to creating art during those times, the better I'll be.
Studio Gratitude
I'm grateful for having space for making art. I have a big desk with decent lighting. My desk sits near a sink for clean up and cabinets for storing canvases, old magazines, boxes, and other media I use in my art. It hasn't been really usable space for a while, but the past week I've started to really make it a workspace again.
While I was doing my training and internship in Integrated Movement Therapy I really stepped out of making art. I wasn't doing much at all, having stopped creating when we were dealing with the last years of my Mother's life. Time to create art seems to be the first thing I cut as being a waste of time, not really "practice".
I know this isn't really true, the research demonstrates that making and creating is what helps make us feel whole. Still, it is the activity that seems to be least important. I'm trying to change that. Art not only feeds my creative side, but it is a way to express the things that are too difficult, too elusive to put into words.
Seeing an art therapist keeps things really in mind and is giving me some motivation. I do think I want to create a body of work to show. As part of my clean up and reorganizing I've made it so I can see finished works from my desk, to help keep me inspired and focused.