Art Therapy Part 1

I think I mentioned somewhere here that I was embarking upon an informal course of art therapy on my own.  No class, no instructor, just occasional following of a couple of art therapy Facebook pages such as 

Art  Therapy Without Borders  (https://www.facebook.com/arttherapywithoutborders) and Art  Therapy (https://www.facebook.com/ArtTherapyBlog).  There are of course other FB pages and websites but these are the two that I'm following.

I also took out some books on art therapy from my library but, unfortunately, they were useless.  Instead, I'll keep consulting the mixed media books I already own.

One of the ways I'm doing art therapy is a shared journal with my friend Lisa Busch, owner of my favorite collage supply store, Collage Stuff (www.collagestuff.com).  She has my journal right now (for which I'd only done 1 page plus the covers), and I have hers.

The first spread of pages I did in her journal is this one: 

The background is simply lots of ordinary crayons used in a tizzy of turmoil on Thursday.  I was having a particularly bad day and needed to release my tension somehow, so I just took Lisa's journal and started crayoning like mad on both pages using different colors.

And it sat until Saturday night, when I decided to play with rubber stamps.  You may be able to see that I used a stamp with a set of eyes, and I also used some gear stamps, and swirly kinds.

Then, for some reason, I impulsively picked up a stamp that looked a bit like a crossword puzzle and stamped it over one set of eyes.  Bingo - it looked like the eyes were looking out from behind a barrier, bars perhaps.  So I did the same thing with the other 2 sets of eyes on the page.

I suppose the deeper meaning to this set is that I feel imprisoned, trapped - but it's probably also related to how I was trapped in a bad situation for many years.

This set is different in which the intent is very clear

Both pages have a mish mosh of red scrap paper glued down in no particular order.  I then used stencils and Sharpies to draw designs all over the pages.

I had been joking with my brother about his needing a suit of armor (he's involved in a political wrangle) and I found the suit of armor on a freebie image site.  I was then inspired to use the caption I did.  Sort of related to the spread before it.

The second page was a reaction to my having wasted so much time in that bad situation.  The images came from a Dover Publications collection of public domain Victorian images.

There you have it - my first real foray into art journaling in a very long time.  What do you think?

later,

lin