Tuesday Voice: Why I paint

By Shirley Deane/Midyett

I paint because I must. Children are born with an innate desire to extend out into their world in different ways, like making mud pies. I started by taking different coloured leaves and little brown twigs and used them to make clothes. I lived in a fantasy-filled world, creating stories. I made up a language and produced little books filled with pictures and symbols.
    Things changed when I went to school. Not only did the teachers not like my endeavours, they wanted me to learn theirs, so I stopped.
    I became a model student. I went on to become a mother of two awesome sons and finally chose the field of psychology as my career. Then at 32, to relax and rejuvenate, I began to haunt art galleries. I made friends with the owner of one of my favourite galleries and we would visit over a cup of coffee. One day she challenged me to take a drawing and colour-composition class.
    Later, after many cups of coffee, and with fear and trepidation, I agreed to “try it” for a couple of weeks. During the second week, while mixing paint, I timidly asked her why she did not show me specific techniques. I had noticed that she was doing so with other students and I was feeling most inadequate.
    With much warmth in her voice and softness in her expression, she told me she would never do that. “You paint from within, with your feelings and needs, and I would dishonour you by doing so.”
    The next week she suddenly became ill and died. With her loss I almost stopped again, but then I realized that I could not now dishonour her. From that time on I began to explore the world between art and human needs and cross over the bridge into experiential art in mental health. For the last forty years I have used art both for personal enjoyment and as a tool to help others.
    Experiential art therapy is primarily a right-brain tool, whereas cognitive therapy is more left-brain. The treatment process is in integrating the two. Experiential Art is a sister tool to the more formalized field of Art Therapy. The focus of experiential art is client-centered, with less interpretation by the therapist. It is often used as a nonverbal tool to aid emotional release in support of cognitive treatment. I have found it most useful with trauma clients.
    For me, the value of the process has been increased self-awareness and identification of client needs, and not what I, as a professional, might interpret a client's drawing or painting as revealing at a particular time. For example, if a client had done the painting below (rather than I), one interpretation could be that the client might feel he or she is at a juncture in life trying to decide which "branch" or fork in the road to go down.
 

Pink and gray Galah in a dead tree in the Murray River (15" x 20")

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Copyright © 2014 by Shirley Deane/Midyett

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