Trees on my Mind

According to art therapy text, the tree symbolizes the Self.

When someone draws a tree, an art therapists will look at several aspects of the image and reflect on the creator's personal characteristics.

In my previous blog, I shared the experience of the cracking that magically happened to my canvas on which I painted a tree. I am still trying to figure out its significance in my life.......the art therapist in me never sleeps.

In this next tree oil painting, I focused mostly on the stout base of the tree trunk and its fabulous colors.



I wander to the realm of personal characteristics traits....an emphasis on strong grounding and solid foundation with colorful accents, but the expressive fern in the foreground draws attention almost to distraction.

Time to sit with these feelings and ponder its significance.

2012 Mandala

Mandala, a sacred circle, creations have been a discipline of mine to connect with myself. I began these way back when I was in a masters program in art therapy and learned that Carl Jung began this method of self-discovery.

What I really enjoy is the freedom and meditative state which occurs when creating mandalas. I guess the process is most important to me regardless of the product. Process versus product is the continual tension of art therapy theory.

After several inquiries about mandala paintings on my website, I realized that I had abandon this practice. Why?

Why not! Even though I sat down to create a mandala in December, it has sat uncompleted at my drawing table until today. Being in an introspective couple of months, I was open to what transpired in the process of creativity. I know frogs represent cleansing, but I am still wondering about the meaning emanating from this creation.

Frog, kaleidoscope, rocks, grounding..........hmmmmm?

More Scribbles

I picked up one of Bet Borgenson's book on colored pencil techniques and shared it with my art therapy client who, unfortunately is now immobile due to Parkinson's. I have shared my recent creations at times, but I no longer get her feedback. I shared my woes regarding colored pencils and brought Bet's book and my sketchbook on my last visit.

What I learned is the importance of paper when using colored pencil. Bet showed a cross-section of different papers and how the colored pencil works with each. Returning again to my frustration and challenge with the paper provided in the sketchbook, I scribbled. The last sketches in my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project 2012 will be done in colored pencil because gluing the watercolor sketches into the sketchbook has made it rather bulky.

This scene was inspired by a vista from my walk on the Chehalis Western Trail not far from my house in Olympia, Washington. I love to watch the seasonal transitions of the ponds and especially like cattails. I am a frequent flier on the Trail.

Children of Gaza Tell Their StoriesThrough Art

I was privileged to visit and conduct an art therapy session with the Palestinian children at the Qattan Centre for the Child (QCC) in Gaza City. QCC is a non-profit cultural and educational institution which focuses on the basic needs of the Palestinian children.

With the aid of my Russian interpreter, Natach, the children told me about the water problems they contend with on a daily basis in Gaza.


Pollution, lack of water, misuse of water, and their difficulties were the themes in their art.



One of the children drew a picture of the Israeli bombs and the white phosphorous which was dropped on the citizens of Gaza.


The children made it very clear the problems they live with in Gaza.

Sponge Painting

One of my art therapy clients liked the effects of sponge painting. Upon her closure with therapy she gifted me with a couple of sponges.

When I was in Greece, I fell in love with the olive tree. After a few attempts painting them in watercolors, I have been disappointed with my ability to capture the silvery shimmer of the leaves in the sunlight. I have been enjoying painting the shapes and forms of the bark of the olive tree, but the leaves have escaped me.

Glancing at a photograph of a grove of olive trees, I realized that the leaves in the distance looked like the texture of a sponge.

With wild abandonment, I began to sponge paint.

I remembered the enjoyment and freedom that I observed watching my art therapy client sponge paint. I, too, was playing as I built up the layers of color and watched the sponge texture. What FUN!

I have been staring at this painting for a few days and decided that after all my fun, I had over worked the sponge painting process. Although it had wonderful texture, it was too dark. I thought about using pastels over it as some artists do, but I did not want to lose the watercolor effect. Looking though my supplies, I found some acrylic paint that I had won at an art demonstration. Hmmmmmm......

As I lighten the leaves of the olive tree, I still desired that lovely sliver-blue sparkle. To my delight, I found a metallic white which I mixed with greens.

Painting done!

Sunlight Dancing in the Olive Grove

mixed-media

Goddess

Goddesses come in all shapes and forms.

I created this one while sharing the practice of art therapy with our International Trauma Treatment Program's practitioner from Sri Lanka. Her graduation and the annual auction will be on Sunday, December 5th from 5-8PM at the Phoenix Inn, 415 Capitol Way North, Olympia, Washington.

This goddess is made with paper mache that comes in a powder form requiring the addition of water. She is a rather hefty goddess in contemplation; she ponders her true potential by the banks of the river.

Reviving The Mandala

I have the honor and privilege to work with a practitioner from Sri Lanka because I am on the faculty of the International Trauma Treatment Program. My role is to facilitate the exchange of information in trauma treatment using art therapy.

My approach is to engage the practitioners in creating art and learning from the process how art therapy might benefit their work with traumatized people of their country.

This is the second practitioner in the program who works at the Butterfly Peace Garden in Sri Lanka. The Butterfly Peace Garden (BPG) is a non-governmental organization established in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka in 1996. Children are brought to the BPG each day from surrounding villages in groups that are mixed with respect to gender and ethnicity (e.g. children from Tamil and Muslim villages). A typical program cycle runs one day a week for nine months and involves activities drawn from a range of visual, dramatic and musical arts. Activities are conducted by adult animators skilled in one or more artistic discipline, who have in many cases experienced psychological wounds similar to those of the children who come to the BPG. The BPG has for several years served as a model for innovative and effective programs for war-affected children, families and communities.

Today, I was feeling a bit "traumatized" from the rushed day I had been experiencing. I explained to the practitioner how "centering" it is to create a mandala especially without any preconceived image. Drawing a circle and creating shapes, lines, and forms with colors inside the boundaries of the circle can be very therapeutic. It is calming and very similar to meditation.

When creating a mandala, I find that images may appear and I can choose to bring forth that image, or not. What appeared today was the image of a female dancing. I wondered if it were a message to me........

to dance with the flow of life rather than to react? There is a free feeling; a sense of joy and power to this movement.
It makes me smile.


This mandala has awakened my intuitive nature and I know that there is more to come. It is posted on my wall so that I can see and hear its message.

It has revived my interest and love of creating mandalas.

Elizabeth Layton

Elizabeth "Grandma" Layton at age 68 was talked into taking an art class by her sister. From that day on her life changed; the true power of art therapy.

She was fighting a 35 year depression, and by taking that art class she cured her depression and changed not only her life but the lives of many. In the art class, Elizabeth learned contour drawing which she developed into her unique form of artistic expression.

In contour drawing the student, fixing their eyes on the outline of the model or object, draws the contour very slowly in a steady, continuous line without lifting the pencil or looking at the paper. The student may look at the paper to place an internal feature, but once they begin to draw it, they do not glance down, but follow the same procedure as for the outline.

It is said that what distinguishes Elizabeth Layton's drawings from others is their breadth, their freshness, and their expression of hope. Few artist have depicted such far reaching social concerns such as capital punishment, homelessness, hunger, racial prejudice, AIDS, aging and the right to die.

The Magic Gate,
Elizabeth Layton
1987
“She is almost through the magic gate to the cosmos. The gate opening up broke a thorny branch off the rosebush - the sting of dying. Behind her are ties to the earth - loved ones, wonderful worldly things, good and bad - her life. We can’t see yet what she sees but the look on her face is joyous.”

Today, I shared her art with my art therapy client, an artist who is no longer verbal or creating art due to Parkinson's Disease. How I wish she could have shared her thoughts with me regarding Elizabeth Layton's art and writing.

For more paintings by Elizabeth Layton, please visit her website.

Picasso and Lump

Today in an art therapy session, I shared the book entitled Picasso and Lump which I purchased in Switzerland after seeing the photographic exhibit by David Duncan.

Lump, meaning rascal in German, was a dachshund who won the heart of Picasso and immediately became a subject matter for his art.

Lump, at bottom, in a cameo appearance
in a Picasso version of “Las Meninas” by Velázquez.

The book, as well as the exhibit, is a lovely view into the personal life of Picasso. The photographs are fabulous and the story is a fun read.

John Singer Sargent

Today my art therapy client and I review paintings by John singer Sargent.

John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American painter, and a leading portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings.

What I noticed particularly at this time viewing his paintings, was his dramatic use of dark.....very dark.......and light.

Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1883–84
John Singer Sargent
Oil on canvas
In 1882, John Singer Sargent wrote of wanting to paint Madame Pierre Gautreau's portrait. He worked on the portrait at the Gautreau's summer home in Brittany in 1883, but he had difficulty finding a suitable pose and perspective. Numerous studies show his different attempts at the composition. The portrait as finally executed was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1884 as "Portrait de Mme ***" and created a scandal. Sargent considered it one of his best works; an unfinished second version of the same pose is in the Tate Gallery in London.

Edgar Degas

I learned a few new interesting facts about Edgar Degas while reading Trewin Copplestone's book, Edgar Degas, to my art therapy client.

Edgar Degas who lived from 1834-1917, became a professional painter through a change in his family's fortunes. He grew up the privileged son of wealthy and cultured parents and despite his interest in art was destined for a career in law until the failure of the family back. Not the typical starving artist!

Rene-Hilaire De Gas
1857
Oil
Edgar Degas was 23 years old when he painted this portrait of his grandfather.

Degas, being the oldest grandson, spent a great deal of time with his grandfather who was the source of his financial security.

More than any of his famous contemporaries, while possibly excluding Manet, Degas was a traditionalist painter. He was dismissive of the Impressionist technique as a method, although he participated in most of the group's early exhibitions. As a result, he is more closely allied in popular understanding with Impressionism than he himself ever wished to be.

Best know for his paintings of ballet dancers, Degas was an urbane and savagely witty man, choosing his subjects from the cultured society life of Paris in which he was a well known figure.

The Green Dancers
1877-9
Pastel and Gouache

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer
On the Trail, 1892

I picked up a The Watercolors of Windslow Homer by Miles Unger at the library to share with my art therapy client.

What FABULOUS color plates of 140 watercolors!

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was not only one of America's greatest painters in oil but also an unrivaled master of the watercolor medium. Homer, along with artists such as John Singer Sargent and John La Farge, helped usher in the first great age of American watercolor painting, setting the stage for the brilliant creations of such twentieth-century masters as Maurice Prendergast, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, and Edward Hopper.

Homer's greatest contribution to watercolor was to expand the possibilities of the medium, investing fragile works on paper with visual and moral weight. His watercolors not only depict the beauty of the wilderness but also document a fragile ecosystem under threat from human exploitation.

Homer himself seemed to recognize his achievement, writing late in life to his brother Charles, "You will see, in the future I will live by my Watercolors."

Gauguin and Friends

Recently I have been reading Robert Goldwater's book Gauguin to my art therapy client as she is not able to paint.

The color plates and descriptions are exceptional. We are learning about the personal side of Gauguin and his challenges with life as well as fellow artists.

Can you imagine hanging out with Monet, Van Gogh, Pissarro and Cezanne? Not only did they have personality clashes, but shared painting techniques. I noticed some of Gauguin's painting techniques resemble Van Gogh's without the heavy applications of paint.

In Gauguin's Intimate Journals, he says, "The Impressionists study color exclusively, but without freedom, always shackled by the need of probability. For them the ideal landscape, created from many entities does not exist.......They heed only the eye, and neglect the mysterious centers of thought, so falling into merely scientific reasoning."

One of my favorite paintings:


Still Life With Three Puppies
Paul Gauguin
1888

Gauguin wrote about the time this picture was painted, "I have sacrificed everything - execution and color - for style, wishing to impose upon myself something else than what I [already] know how to do." This painting is filled with the most brilliant color, but it is color determined by a conception so original, and in many ways so much ahead of its time that one understands how Gauguin could feel that he was forcing himself toward a style he had not previously imagined, subordinating all else in the effort.

I can relate to feeling like a sacrifice to try something new in the realm of art, but excitingly so. I seem to be in that place and time.

Watercolor Painting With Passion

Fabulous book by Alvaro Castagnet, Watercolor Painting With Passion!

I share art books with one of my art therapy clients. Today Alvaro's paintings captivated us. He is an expressive painter and exhibits a strong, impressive and colorful style with superb interpretation of light effects that capture the soul of places he paints. I like his impressionistic style with realism. His "cityscapes" instills in me a desire to travel.

I found it humorous the foreword of the book quotes Picasso's on painters and painting encapsulates the basic qualities, the prerequisites, for entry into this peculiar pastime of painter - sensitivity, insecurity and insanity.

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

In the most recent Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, I read an article by Linney Wix about Friedl Dicker-Brandeis.

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898-1944) was an art educator who taught art to children in the Terezin concentration camp north of Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia between 1942-1944. Although she was formally an art teacher, her approach resulted in a practice that was similar to art therapy.

She invited the children to discover their own forms of expression and waited for what would emerge. For some children distraction from the daily traumas of camp life may have been enough; others may have used the art lessons to create beautiful pictures, to remember a past family joy, or to image a future reunion with a parent.

Although Dicker-Brandeis took charge of scrounging materials, she understood that her students would take just what they needed from each art class. She offered herself, all the materials she could find, and the invitation. Then, providing guidance as she saw fit, she accepted what the children created as valid. In this way she supported their spiritual and artistic strengths and helped them contend with the conditions under which they were living. Providing access to beauty through art classes was her way of helping children to psychologically survive the war and its circumstances.



"I Never Saw Another Butterfly" is a representation of those surviving pictures, which are now housed at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. Illustrating the pictures, as it were, are collections of poetry and prose, and excerpts from a few journals.

It is amazing that this art and collection of writing survived!

Thank you, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

Today's Mandala

As I was working with our two International Trauma Treatment Program practitioners from Liberia and Serbia, I noticed how engaged they were with their art. Usually I do not create art myself during an art therapy session because I would not be attentive to my students. But, today was different!

So much is happening in my life that at times I feel overwhelmed. When I create a mandala, I find myself in a natural meditative state. Images appear and I move with them unraveling insights. It is a dance of mind, body, and the creative spirit. As the story unfolds so does the art.

Today's mandala turned out to be the tree of life. Representing my world at the present time; colorful, vibrant, and growing.

I find it interesting that the mandala was created diagonally............hmmmmmmmm.



Tree of Life

China Design Now

Today, I was reading the Portland Art Museum Magazine with my art therapy client. October 10th through January the exhibit, "China Design Now," will be the featured exhibit at the Oregon Art Museum in Portland.

China Design Now explores the recent explosion of critically compelling design and architecture projects created in China, contextualizing the impact of rapid economic development on these projects in the country’s major cities. This immersive, multi-sensory exhibition captures a dynamic phase in China, as it opens up to global influences and responds to the hopes and dreams of its new urban middle class.

Representing three swiftly expanding cities — Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen — the exhibition features the work of Chinese and international designers focused on architecture, fashion and graphic design, film, photography, product and furniture design, youth culture, and digital media. Visitors journey south to north along China’s east coast, exploring graphic design and visual culture in China’s manufacturing capital, Shenzhen, fashion and lifestyle in Shanghai, and architecture in Beijing, home of the 2008 Olympic stadium.

Sounds like an exhibit not to miss!

Chinese Brush Painting

Today my art therapy client and I read about Chinese Brush Painting while we sat outside in the sunshine at Decatur Park in Olympia, Washington. What a fascinating discovery!

Best described as a "voiceless poem" or "soundless music," Chinese brush painting uses ink and color to paint direct studies of the natural world on paper or silk. It differs from western painting in having no particular concern about light and shade; instead, it uses special brush-and-ink techniques to combine the clear representation of the subject's structure with an attempt to express its internal spirit.

Chinese painting divides into three main subject areas: landscape, figure, and the painting of flowers and birds, which also includes all types of animal and plant life.

As well as being divided into three areas of subject matter, Chinese art can also be divided into two distinct styles - the Meticulous and the Freehand - which themselves developed from the historical "Academic" and "Literati" traditions.

Of all the plants, the plum blossom, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum have become the basis of Chines art because of their beauty and characters. Chinese art has adopted them as symbols of the great intellectual ideals, and the are known as "The Four Gentleman."

We were in awe at the paintings displayed in the book, The Simple Art of Chinese Brush Painting by Qu Lei Lei.


Painting on Silk
Chuen Yue

Why Cats Paint

Today I shared the book Why Cats Paint by Heather Busch and Burton Silver with my art therapy client who is no longer able to paint.

The photos in the book are phenomenal! There are twelve cats featured and each one has its own style of painting. The authors share the personal stories of each cat as well as the psychological implications of their paintings and techniques.

One cat paints en plein air. What I found particularly interesting was how the palettes the cats choose coincides with what they are painting from (one has Van Goghs around him) or their surroundings.

Many of the cats that paint spend at least ten minutes sitting in harmonic resonance prior to commencing a work of art. The authors inject that the cats derive some inspirational power from the invisible low frequency force fields. I always felt cats "space out," but maybe this is what they are doing?



I am not ready to let my cats loose with paints!

Light and Texture

Today I was reading to my art therapy client from the book Incredible Light and Texture in Watercolor by James Toogood.

The paintings in the book are exquisite. He provides step-by-step demonstrations to teach the basic watercolor techniques depicting light and texture. I was very impressed with how thorough he covered each subject. It is what most people ask for when learning watercolors.

James believes that talent is overrated. "Determination and persistence are more important. If you have a passion for painting, the skills can be acquired."

He feels that painting is a powerful and unique language that reaches out across borders and communicates to virtually anyone, anywhere. I know this for a fact through my involvement in the field of art therapy.

His book is rightfully named as James paints incredible light and texture into his watercolor paintings. Look how he captures the water.........


Coastline
James Toogood