The Arts – Therapy in Daily Life
Seminar within Seoul International Art Festival 2009
Seminar report by Sylvia Catharina Hess / Germany
Art Therapy in Everyday Life
“Self fulfilment and the development of our creativeness is the most precious achievement in life.” (Albert Einstein)
There are many situations in life in which the encounter with arts can have a therapeutic effect. This is true for the reception of arts as well as the production (I use the term "arts" in a very broad sense.).
Music is the art which plays with our emotions in the most direct way. Why else would music be played at private or public festivities, religious services, openings of big sports events or used in movies to underline the dramatic development? Music has this direct impact on our emotions because the auditory centers in our brain are connected to the limbic system which controls our emotions.
Pure zest for life through music © Sylvia Catharina Hess
With sound and rhythm music can generate the most different feelings, music can make us cheerful or sad, it can calm us down or enthrall us, it can trigger memories, even the memories of patients suffering from the Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, music is used as a powerful remedy in psychotherapy.
However, I am a painter and as a painter I focus my attention to the visual arts starting with the question why people care about arts in the first place. On the surface art is mostly used to decorate private and public rooms. Most people hang pictures they like on the walls of their homes and live with them. They choose scenes and colours so they may fit to the layout of the room, complement the style of the furniture and round off the room in a harmonious way
© Sylvia Catharina Hess
People often choose art prints and original paintings because of positive associations like memories of a beautiful holiday place, the calming effect of ocean and clouds, a beautiful shape in a nude portrait, or a fabric of forms and colors in an abstract piece of art which appeals to the individual recipient. The owners in fact experience a therapeutic effect by their continuous encounter with such pieces of art: they help them to relax after work and to feel safe in their homely environment.
A much smaller group of people invites pieces of art into their homes which are provocative, prompt objection, and are not perceived as "beautiful" in the common middle-class definition. These people wittingly or unwittingly realized that art can be so much more than just ornamental art in our lives. By challenging our viewing and thinking patterns art helps us to stay spirited, active-minded and able to adapt to new and unfamiliar ideas and concepts. This is not easy as is being proven by the ever recurring controversial disputes about art in public rooms – although such controversies also illustrate how communication processes can be started by art.
© Sylvia Catharina Hess
Once the value of a piece of art is brought home to a person who initially did not "like it" or "understand it", the piece of art has already contributed to broaden the person's horizon – a social therapeutic aspect of art.
The art consumer's individual sense of beauty, however, can be used for medical purposes. Recent studies have shown that people are less pain sensitive when watching pictures they find beautiful than when watching ugly pictures or neutral surfaces.
Psychotherapy has been using visual arts for quite a long time already, namely in terms of art therapy. For example hyper active patients or anxiety patients can regain meditative composure by using paint brush and paint.
Picture from art therapy © Sylvia Catharina Hess
Art therapy is also used when a disease makes it difficult or impossible for patients to express themselves verbally. Such symptoms can stem from incidents in the distant past, from unpleasant, painful experiences which had been repressed by the patient but continue to have an effect on their subconscious. Art therapy, i. e. integrative painting, helps the patients to visualize these inner pictures with colours and to release self healing powers as a result. Since colours affect the soul, the patient can use them in a therapeutic process to sort out, let go of or transform emotions. The encounter with the picture leads to an encounter with the own self and the previously repressed parts of the self which can now be re-integrated into life. In less dramatic cases a painting and design therapy can always be used when people are caught in a life crisis or a state of stagnation and have lost the access to the sources of their strength.
Pictures are the language of the soul. All artists will confirm that. Each picture talks to us from the innermost part of the person who created it, even though they observed the laws of the symphony of colours or the central perspective. The philosophy of arts speaks about the "aesthetic ideas" which the artist follows intuitively and apparently unintentionally, no matter if he deals with reality in a playful way or if he struggles to create something that roots deep inside of him and which he wants to materialize.
Painting becomes an inner dialogue and art becomes something truthful when the results of this inner debate are incorporated in the actual piece of art. When words fail pictures can relate insight and feelings because they speak all languages.
Wrapping up this article I want to share a personal experience: Art bestows abundance to the artist's life. Art expands time when I am enwrapped in colours and do not realize the ticking of the clock. Art fills me with ideas for projects. It makes me ponder and scheme and then makes me abandon the schemes. Art is full of surprises. It grabs me, pulls me into one direction and lets me go, it makes me despair and rejoice. It brings me encounters with new people and leads me to new places. In short – art is bursting life. As Phil Bosmans so aptly sums it up: "Creativity cleanses the soul and cleans the heart. It's the best therapy for these times."