The expressive arts may involve a range of arts, such as: visual art, creative writing, dance, drama, music, movement and play. Often one art form blends into another seamlessly when we are fully present in our bodies.
At The Expressive Art Project, we mostly use a range of visual art modalities (drawing, painting, collage, clay) and, where appropriate accompany the visual arts with intuitive writing/journalling, music, movement, play and nature related experiences.
In traditional product orientated art classes, a participant would be taught or be practising a specific art skill or technique, perhaps learning how to draw or how to use watercolours effectively in landscape painting to create a particular outcome. Although there are times when an expressive art session might involve the passing on of some techniques, for example in art journalling or particular printing modalities, teaching skills and techniques are not the focus in expressive art sessions.
Instead, participants are free to explore and play with a variety of materials and perhaps come up with their own techniques and shorthand for effects they enjoy creating. The focus is the experience itself, the process is the art.
The purpose of an expressive art session is to express your inner world, to say things visually that cannot be said in words. To explore the edges of your imagination and to dive into your intuition. In many ways it is about bypassing the mind, the intellect and allowing your body-mind, your senses and deepest feelings to tell your story.
Expressive arts as therapy can be used as an excellent mental health intervention and is focused on the integration of various arts for therapeutic benefit. It can be ideal for people experiencing anxiety, depression, PTSD or the effects of trauma. The experience can be very powerful and transformative, and can initiate a deep healing process that traditional talking therapies cannot touch. Expressive arts therapy is non-verbal and differs from the analytic or medical model of art therapy, in which art is used to diagnose, analyze and “treat” people. At The Expressive Art Project, we would help to signpost our participants to relevant therapists, counsellors or other helping agencies, if they felt they could benefit from it.
However the purpose of many of our sessions is to catch people before they reach crisis. The focus of our sessions is not on ‘fixing’ someone, but is focused instead on health by engaging our innate creativity and allowing the beauty inside all of us to find expression and bloom into being.
At The Expressive Art Project, we feel that art has become intellectualised and many children (and adults) feel disenfranchised from their own creative potential. It saddens us greatly that very young children who play with art making with wild and uninhibited abandon, begin to notice that art in mainstream society is about talent – who has it and who hasn’t. They quickly figure out where they lie on the talent scale, and for some, this makes them reluctant to pursue art in any way, whilst for others it leads them into habits of perfectionism.
We value traditional product orientated art, we certainly think it has a place. But we are here to remind people of the innate wild artist within, which we all posses and the incredible opportunity for healing it brings. No judgement required.
‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once they grow up’ – Pablo Picasso.
And just incase you think that all sounds really complicated, our message is simple, make the art you want to make and have fun doing it. And at the end of a session, stick the painting on your wall or recycle it into a new, exciting art experiment! There are no rules!
The Expressive Art Project 