The bright Arizona sun shone through the window of my family room. My hands were covered in a spectrum of splattered acrylic paint, and some of it was caked beneath my fingernails. With the fine texture of canvas beneath my fingers, I sat to paint.
This summer, I painted over 15 canvases for my dorm room. As a perfectionist who rarely finishes a voluntary creative project, this was a big deal for me. But with the pandemic looming over my shoulders, I needed to decompress, rest and turn my mind away from overthinking. With my sisters and two of my closest friends, I turned my family room into an art studio and painted for hours, sometimes talking and sometimes in silence. With the recent events of my life, my soul needed a breath, and this moment offered that.
As a college student or a professional, almost everything we produce is digital and evaluated by someone else, whether it be a professor or boss. Our creative process looks nothing like it did in kindergarten or first grade. As children, we illustrate pictures with Crayola crayons and let our imaginations run wild. It doesn’t matter that a mermaid tiger doesn’t exist; we draw it anyway. Practicality isn’t a part of this moment. At some point though, we stop. Maybe it’s because our drawing isn’t as good as someone else’s. Maybe it’s because we start to focus on grades and the practicality of life. Nevertheless, there comes a time when we set the person who dreamed up a fairy hippopotamus to the side and never look back.
In our digital world of deadlines, it is easy to compartmentalize stresses and anxieties, dealing with them as best we can. But for Madi Blackburn, a junior art therapy major, art and creativity go hand-in-hand with the ups and downs of life.
During middle school and high school, Blackburn did not have a clear vision of college or adult life. All she knew was that she loved art and wanted to help others. It was not until her late grandmother introduced her to the world of art therapy that her view of the future became clearer. Blackburn has a naturally creative spirit and believes that art has a place in everyone’s life, no matter how much experience they have.
“Art should never be exclusive. To me, everyone should feel free to participate in making something, whatever they choose to call it,” Blackburn said.
Art therapy is an approach to mental health that uses creativity and art to help people explore self-expression and awareness. Blackburn noted that intentional creativity, even in an informal sense, can help you realize things about yourself, decompress or process something that you are going through.
Last spring in a personal portrait class, Blackburn created an abstract self-portrait depicting her relationship with her late grandmother. The piece contained a background created with a collage of different notes from loved ones, highlighting the handwriting of her grandmother. On top of the collage, Blackburn painted her eyes and within the reflection of those eyes, a portrait of herself and her grandmother (see photo above.) The process of creating this portrait helped Blackburn process the grief of her grandmother’s passing and remember the love that they shared.
“Creativity accesses a different part of your brain, and you can disconnect from thinking everything through. It’s interesting how art interacts with emotion and how you can express emotion without words,” said Blackburn. “You can only get so far with words. They’re very limiting. To me, art bridges the gap that words can’t fill.”
It’s almost been a year since the start of the pandemic, and I don’t know about you, but I just can’t believe it. The compounding stress over the experiences of the last year and the increasingly overwhelming “pandemic fatigue” can leave even the best of us emotionally overwhelmed, but Tamarin Huelin, director of counseling services at Union, noted that the pandemic has forced us into periods of solitude and stillness that we otherwise would not have experienced.
“There can be an opportunity in times of suffering to remind us we don’t have the control that, as Americans, we often think we do,” Huelin said. “We should continue to dig in and use our worry as a signal to pivot us away from trying to control the future and the uncertainties of life.”
I had no idea how profoundly my experience last summer would change the way I engage with the pain in my life. During those moments with my sisters and friends, I felt a peace I had not felt in months. Art requires you to make mistakes and embrace imperfection and missed expectations, a lesson we can all learn. Intentional creativity is now part of my weekly routine, and I can’t believe I ever lived life without it.
In this time of exceptional stress, grief and even trauma for some, it is important to process the pain. Our emotions are often intangible, and visual expressions of those emotions can help articulate what is difficult to put into words. As I talked with Blackburn, she mentioned how art can help us cope with things we do not yet understand or are not ready to face. Both Huelin and Blackburn encourage others to set time aside to breathe and just create. Not for a deadline. Not for a boss. Not for a grade. Create like a child: for the pure joy of the experience.
