2018-04-08 Meeting

Art Therapy with Don Stevens & Lynn Murphy

14 people present

Lynn: Art therapy may not at first look like it’s related to the community. But art is something that many of us haven’t been involved with - for a variety of reasons. As time goes on, we find that we don’t need to be great at art in order to express yourself, and it’s great for us to do as we get older. I’ve benefitted a lot from this, and I wanted to share it with you.

We have Don Stevens here who was there when I began art therapy.

Jennifer Dingle, who has framed all of these pictures and will be flipping through the artwork.

Don Stevens

I started out as a teacher many years ago, which brought home the importance of art to me. In the ‘70s, getting a teaching job in Halifax was nigh impossible. Out in West Northfield, one of my students always felt that he could do nothing right, and one day he said, “Mr Stevens, I didn’t know how great I could be until I was in your class.” So - he thought he was great there, and that spread to him feeling like he Gould be great anywhere.

I integrated art into every subject that I taught. Many. Years later, I felt that I wanted to do art myself, and formed a volunteer group for people involved with the AIDS Coalition - not those just with HIV, but everyone involved. Everyone was well. Welcome. People were able to express their emotions in a way that they wouldn’t be able to user words. ripple could talk about their issues in the context of the art. I found a place with Cancer Care and the QEII Pain management Clinic.

What is Art Therapy? Th person who does this has to have a lot of empathy - which possibly can’t be taught. You need to “know your own darkness” to feel that of others.

This isn’t going to take away pain, and it’s not going to cure cancer — but it can help you cope. If people feel they’re with others in the same boat, they can feel better.

What *isn’t* art therapy? Well, even if you feel like you can’t do art, you can still do art therapy. you may learn a thing or two about colour and perspective, but you won’t turn into Bob Ross. It also isn’t crafts to keep you busy - no macaroni soldiers (unless you want to make macaroni soldiers.)

To do this in groups, you have to have a safe, positive environment. You have to feel like they can talk about their pain. But, maybe not, for example, some kind of abuse as a child. You share as much as you want to share. The groups should be small - any more than about eight people is good. Typically you can’t use oil paint, so I use everything else, mostly tempura paint- mixes with water, or acrylics. you can get some really good materials at the Dolar Store — except for the brushes. you probably want to invest in some nice brushes.

And, rituals : do rituals if they work for you, don’t if they don’t.

In an Open Studio, people can just drop in at any time during the day.

The Directive Approach: I give a directive or theme or topic and we all work on the same idea together. Or, we do quotations, for example, “Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.” — H. Jackson. You can see that you could do three drawings, a triptych, around that quote.

Sometimes we restrict materials, e.g. clay, or masks. Think about having the outside of the mask representing our outside person, and the inside of the mask as your inside feelings. You could also do this with a dollar store box. But even in those situations, if you want to do something different, you can. The directive will often be a useful place to get someone going. It’s one of many ways for that. Sometimes someone is really stuck, and there are lots of ways to get them going.

There’s some trust involved - trust the process, trust your leader.

What are the benefits? It encourages relief from overwhelming emotions. The sense of having overcome anxiety about doing the art is also itself therapeutic. You’ll discover insights about yourself — sometimes long after you’ve made the piece of art. And, you may forget about your problems for four minutes or forty minutes.

Lynn Murphy

Art: The Tree.

At my first session, there was just one other person signed up, so I thought I’d get some individual attention. I soon discovered that the art therapy was not about doing fine paintings, but about expression. Don asked me to bring the painting of the old tree struck by lightening because I. Had made an analogy of that, and a person being... struck by a stroke. it destroys your life as you knew it, and causes a lot of changes.

Collage: THERE IS A CRACK IN EVERYTHING

The painting expresses my life before the stroke, and after the stroke, and how I’m different before and after. The collage is kind of “crazed”. This expresses the emotions. It’s made out of pieces of paper that were glued onto a larger piece of paper. There is hardly any brush work - there’s a little magic marker. I chose the collage format just as a change from the markers. Later on I got into acrylic - a paint, and pastel, a kind of crayon.

PAINTING: KItchen:

again this is a two part piece which also illustrates the before-and-after of working in the kitchen.

Don: on seeing this painting, my teacher suggested that my thesis would be about resilience. My students would come to the classes, in rain or shine, in pain or not in pain.

PAINTING: I Feel Threatened. *house/chair in brown on left, Purple arrrow person on right.

Several of my pain triggers are cold and sudden loud noises. In my building, there are frequent fire alarms which trigger me in several different ways. On the left, there’s a table with a cloud full of monsters. There are people shooting guns ... relating to violence in the media, which is threatening. Also, I am afraid that I’m going to get worse and worse and will have to go to a nursing home. So the painting is full of expressions of actual fears.

PAINTING : AT THE CANADA GAMES POOL Blue - girl in a swimming pool.

I began to feel constricted by painting about pain all the time, and had other things in my life such as AI-Chi - like tai chi but in the water. This picture is at the Canada Games Pool, but I also do the ai chi in my building. In this piece I’m working less in a cartoon style and more thinking about how it looks as a painting.

PAINTING red/brown girl in blue dress on L, window on R. DANCING TO MAKE THE BABY SMILE.

This painting is from a memory in PEI - I’d do the highland fling which is quite bouncy and sing-able. So here I’m thinking about my life in the long term - as a child or as a teenager.

PAINTING greenhouse .

This painting is about Bill Romkey taking me out to the Farmer Clem’s greenhouse in Bedford, buying herbs for my balcony. The plants are by and large unknown to science.

PAINTING: Rainbow Haven. three people and a walker, a blue sky, and clouds.

In this painting, since my stroke, I wasn’t able to wade in the salt water. It seems like a simple thing, but I grew up on an island, used to go to the beach. One day, a couple of friends helped me get out to Rainbow Haven and we all took pictures. This painting is from one of those.

After a couple of years we were seeking a space to do art. We finally decided to meet in the common room in my apartment building. There’s space for about six people, and a sink, but there’s no place to store supplies or works-in-progress.

In order for us to do this we kind of need a volunteer — someone to wash brushes and lay out drop cloths etc.

One of the nice things about painting is that you can create gifts. I am very thankful for all of the additions to my life that have come out of this art therapy project.