Art, Passion, and Life - Art as Healing

I love passionate people (mostly). Some passions border on obsession or obsessiveness where you can't stop thinking about it and it's pretty much what you live for, dream about, and want to do with all your heart for all your life. Making art, children's picture books, and teaching/mentoring are pretty much it for me.

My obsession started as a child in a difficult working class neighborhood where art making was my refuge and my joy. I could literally draw out my pain or I could create fantasy worlds that I could escape into (self-portrait mermaids were a common theme as were lovely landscapes). Art making helped me survive many difficult things and heal from them.

My parents were war survivors and died young. After that I pretty much raised myself. If anyone mentioned parents or war, I would simply leave the room. I was scared that if I spoke about them I would start crying and never stop.

One day I did a painting using our family's iconic "family portrait" photo as reference. I was so scared I'd just cry and cry and cry. And I did. But then I stopped and in the process of painting that painting and allowing myself to feel the sadness, something profound shifted. I still have and love that painting (I'm the sad twin in the lower right).

For years, many of my paintings were about sadness or grief or about being confused, conflicted, or angry, until I'd drawn out so much of that stuff. When I lived in San Francisco, I had a year where I just allowed myself to paint darkness, mostly black ink on white paper with a big brush, but also quite a few color paintings about my family and the Holocaust. My best friend and I went to the beach and built a fire and burned all the art. People rushed up offering to buy pieces but I needed to burn them and watch all that sorrow go up in flames. It was fascinating how the canvas on the back of the paint burned first and then the paint turned into chalk and then it was just gone. It was incredibly beautiful.

When I came to the US, I was lucky enough to have a solo exhibition curated by one of my art heroes (and crushes) Enrique Chagoya http://tinyurl.com/3ter9dm . Enrique encouraged me to  show my most intense work and take elements out of the paintings and continue them onto the wall so it was even more intense. I got the most amazing responses to that show including an invitation to illustrate a bilingual children's book about change. This began my career as a children's book illustrator where I got to create empowering anti-racist kids books. Talk about healing.


Now my work is very often about light and color and joy. Even tho I still sometimes paint about difficult things or things that I'm questioning, I do it with a much lighter heart and palette. Am so grateful for the power of art as a force of transformation and good in the world.


When I was a grad student, my dissertation chair asked me "What is your agenda?" I said "to be a force for good in the world." I feel grateful that I get to do this through my own work and by teaching others skills to access their own art making or deepen it. It's always sweet to be in a place of gratitude. Now I'm off to obsessively paint!

Fabulous day, art therapy, making more monsters, and flocking love

Had a wonderful day with Bebe the dog I'm petsitting who is just pure love. So beautiful to be around. When I take him walking he has such a spring in his little terrier step, it's infectious. Worked on some sample monsters for Saturday's class and then went to my art therapy group with the fabulous Majica Phillips of @Midtown Art Therapy. We did our check-ins and lo and behold we were going to make art about our shadow selves and inner monsters - woo-woo. Got to make some dark art (way darker than we will be doing on Saturday, tho who knows) and and wrote a few words describing our feelings about this part of ourselves on the back of the small canvas panels. Then we did this neato thing of passing our piece around with the instructions for each of us to to make the next person's shadow self beautiful with what we know about this person, so once again it was going to a place of giving love and ultimately receiving gobs of it. Each person added art to the front and words to the back and mine went from being this dark sad and spooky painting to full of light and joy as it went around the room. I loved working on everyone's piece and experimented with glitter and flocking powder and I flocking loved it! Really. Flocking is awesome. Our pieces turned out so beautiful, and the words on the back were incredibly touching. We had to read them out loud saying "I am" and then each of the words our group members had written. I got teary with mine as I've been a little hard on myself for not being more of a mainstream success (i.e. money maker) lately. Sigh. Someone wrote that I was bountiful which was a lovely affirmation, also that I was beautiful, talented, funny, smart (I think) and glistening. Must write these in flocking somewhere so I remember them in those self-judgement moments.

Here's what I love about art therapy: It's all about getting stuff out quickly and visually (not about the aesthetics) which is hard for me because I like to take my time and craft each piece so that it is as beautiful as I can make it, but not doing this is incredibly liberating and unprecious and this approach or loosening up is spilling out into the art I make at home. I alos love how art therapy acknowledges, validates and utilizes the healing power of art for personal growth, and working thru blockages, and for me personally, I get to experiment with materials I would never normally use, be unconcerned with outcomes, have lots of fun, and form community with wonderful people. My Transformational Arts Practice courses are like a modified version of art therapy that also teach systematic art skills and allows more time for an aesthetic experience. It works more on an affirmation and exploration level integrating what I've learned from research, being an art ed prof, teaching art, and being involved with personal growth for many many years. Have I mentioned how grateful I am to be in Northern California where this way of being is so accepted? Right now am in a place of gratitude.