What is Art to Me?: How to use Art as Therapy?

1. Memories

We live in a world of stress and distraction so it is hard for us to remember everything. We often write down what we
need to remember. To remember something sentimental or something that stirs great feelings in us, we make an image
of it.

In our day and age, we snap a picture of what we want to remember, but before the snapshot came art.

2. Hope

The authors argue that a person viewing a pretty picture is neither ignoring nor forgetting reality. They cannot see a
picture as beautiful without the contrast of what they know to be true about the harshness and stress of life.

We give most of our focus to the things in our lives that cause us stress and negative emotions. The authors point out
that we need pretty art to give us hope.

Art reminds us that there is beauty in the world that we can strive to see it, appreciate it, and have it.

3. Sorrow

Art doesn’t just increase our capacity for joy, it validates our sorrows.

Because we can appreciate and identify with sorrow shown in a work of art, we are able to take solace in not being
alone in those feelings and reactions. We are also able to turn the sympathy we have for the subject to ourselves. Art
helps us see that sorrow can be beautiful and noble and still be one aspect of a good life.

The power of art lies neither in the image nor the emotions it arouses in the viewer, rather its greatness is derived from
understanding the creative forces which inspired the masterpiece.

4. Rebalancing (The Most Powerful Way to Use Art as Therapy)

Our day to day lives influences the balance of our emotional makeup. A stockbroker might be balanced toward a fast
panic, a social worker toward depression, or a pre-school teacher toward excitement and childlike happiness.

Viewing art that depicts situations and feelings outside of what we normally experience on a daily basis helps us attain
balance in our emotions by filling those voids.

5. Self-Understanding

Art helps us to complete our own unformed thoughts and ideas.

We have an ‘aha’ moment when we see a piece of art that perfectly captures a feeling or thought we have had that we
couldn’t express. When this happens, we have gained a piece of new knowledge through the art that we can now
communicate to ourselves and to others.

People express the self-understanding they have gained from art in the images they put on their walls, upload to social
media, or wear on their t-shirts.

6. Growth

When we see a picture of something we haven’t personally experienced or of an emotion that we don’t have a personal
context for, we can take the time to think about it, react to it, and empathize with it.

If we were to encounter that situation in reality without having ever seen it before in art we wouldn’t have the time to
think about it before judging or reacting.

Because we have been exposed to these situations in art and have processed them in our minds when we encounter
them in the world we have a prior context in which to organize our thoughts about them and react in a kinder way than
we might have otherwise.

That is growth.

7. Appreciation

Humans are creatures of habit and routine. We often miss seeing the average, everyday things that surround us. When
we do think outside of our routines, we often think about things we aspire to have and not the things that we do have.

Art helps us to revisit the value of ordinary things like the pretty colors in a splash of morning light on a table cloth or the
familiar and nostalgic aspects of old beer cans.