By Dr. Venetta Whitaker –
Art has profound healing and therapeutic powers. I believe that we all are artists whether or not we choose to express our God – given creative powers to draw paint, play, garden, write, creative poetry, dance, or sing.
Clearly, everyone does not share this belief. Some people prefer to think that an artist must be professionally trained, gifted from birth or able to duplicate realistic images. Yet, all children love to draw and color. They sketch with little or no concern about replicating objects or coloring inside the lines.
The question is: what happened to our artistic talents and intuitive imagination in the years between childhood and adulthood?
Art is a corrective event that presents us with the opportunity to repair the traumas of past experience, develop new relationships with our inner selves and community in ways that go beyond the limits of words.
Thou Shalt:
1) Believe that you are an artist
2) Know that art is an entirely expressive, natural and necessary activity
3) Understand that healing and art are a single process
4) Realize that art promotes health and wholeness
5) See that art expresses the truth of human existence
6) Use art to develop new relationships with your inner self
7) Learn to place yourself into the world of others by viewing images of different people, other places and other ways of being
8) Focus on the here and now
9) Accept people’s own interpretations of their art
10) Believe in art as a powerful therapeutic tool