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Art As A Tool For Healing


mfh

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About 3 months after Bill died a friend invited me to go up north where she was teaching a writing class for a week at a UW program. We rented a cabin on the river and I signed up for a watercolor class and have since experienced watercolor as a healing tool that is sometimes just a distraction, other times an expression of various feelings from despair to hope, from sorrow to joy.

I came across this site today and it contains various ideas on the use of art to heal. I pass it on to you in hopes it might be helpful to someone.

http://www.expressiveartworkshops.com/expressive-artists/100-art-therapy-exercises/

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Here is a link to a series of Pinterest boards all on Art Therapy....many ideas for healing with art: Kassie Danielle Art Therapy, http://www.pinterest.com/kassieds/art-therapy/

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have been doing Art Therapy for several months now only I call it art healing. It brings me calm and also I am finding that it requires focus or what I sometimes call mindfulness.

Anne

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I like what you are doing, Anne...yes, calming, creative, and takes patience and awareness. They are also beautiful. Thanks for sharing. Mary

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  • 2 weeks later...

My music and pencil/marker art keep me centered. I do other things but this passtime helps me in my healing. The picture looks better when you click on save because you see the full picture.

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INcredible and I love the pup.

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  • 2 weeks later...

At Last

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A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Robert Frost
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Spring happened at 10:57 a.m. in Spring Green, WI...the sun is out.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Anne, of course e.e. cummings is one of my favorites (Bill's also). Your zencoloring is meditation, you know...and it is lovely, uplifting and full of spring.

Here is another favorite that was read at Bill's funeral:

“i thank You God for most this amazing” by e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings
1894-1962

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  • 1 month later...

My basket of flowers. . .

"Arranging a basket of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day ~ like writing a poem or saying a prayer."

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and LISTEN.

~ Anne Lamott

click on SAVE for a better picture

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Oh, Dear Anne,

That is a beautiful basket of flowers! I am smiling, and my heart is delighting in joy to see your bountiful basket of flowers. It floods my heart with memories of picking flowers and making arrangements at the ranch, and filling the house with their fragrance. How very beautiful to see the generous celebration of Spring gathered into your basket and share with us all. Thank you for your art and for all the beauty you bring to this healing place.

Much Love,

fae

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I did that tonight. I appreciated the Spring. I went into the garden alone (apart from Kelbi) and looked at the geraniums with the bees flying in and out. And just blessed them. I wish I had artistic talent but I don't. I can't write poetry either. But I can appreciate both. Thanks Anne. That is lovely.

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