Art Therapy Demonstration – On the Way to Fulfilling a Dream

Ariella, an alternative therapist, divorced, age 50, came to therapy with a desire to fulfill a dream — establishing a school in her therapeutic field. She wanted to find out what was stopping her from realizing and executing her dream.

In the first session, Ariella arrived excited from the day's events. I asked her to draw her feelings in colors and shapes to allow her to calm down and express her excitement. Ariella chose to paint with finger paints from a wide selection of colors (Panda colors, gouache, chalks, pencils, and markers) and said: "I feel like painting from the heart, not sterile — the brush represents sterility to me." When she finished painting, she described the drawing as a mess with a black line bordering without a clear direction and a yellow stain that reminded her of "a jellyfish, something soft and parasitic" (the soft described as something negative), and she added that there was a red color that is "the activator" in her dictionary of associations. Afterward, she drew another drawing, also without any instruction from me, intuitively, and this time the result looked more organized "with clarity and cleanliness." She added that touching the mess allowed her to create the quiet. "Actually, I n e e d the mess for the quiet and the quiet for the mess, a kind of circularity." This is how she understood from the drawings she made the need for not-knowing and the feeling of mess, understood that they are necessary for her to create quiet and order, and that neither is preferable to the other — they serve each other.

In the first session, as mentioned, Ariella directly asked me to help her fulfill her dream of opening a school and to search for what blocks and prevents fulfilling the dream. In response to her request, I suggested that in the next session she draw a bridge in which she would spontaneously describe in shape and color her symbolic position on the bridge — how she perceives herself in the present, the place she feels she comes from, and the place she wants to reach. Ariella drew a large figure at the beginning of the bridge, a small one in the middle, and finally drew a tree as the place she wants to reach.

Ariella was surprised by the result and understood from observing the drawing that in order to get on the bridge she would need to make some change toward "smallness" and "not-knowing," just as she became smaller in the center of the bridge. "With all the bigness of now, I won't be able to learn anything," she said. The green tree suited her as an image she wanted to reach, symbolizing for her "a healing force that gives serenity and confidence."

Additional elements that emerged through the drawings and their observation were the blockages and boundaries she creates for herself, the difficulty of touching the softness within her, the discovery that there are gaps between her many skills in the real world, along with the difficulty of being grounded — that there is something in the transition between the inner and outer world that requires understanding.

Painting from the heart

A bridge leading from a figure to a tree

When Ariella sought to explore through drawing what connects and separates the inner and outer worlds, drawings were created with encounters between soft yellow and contrasting purple colors with sharp forms penetrating into the yellow as if the soft were under threat of attack. I wondered to myself whether these shapes and colors represent the encounter between inner and outer in her world. And then, when we spread large brown paper beneath the drawing she had made earlier to see what happens when there is more space outside, Ariella drew without thought and very quickly: a frame! The surprise at seeing the frame was great and tears streamed from her eyes in response. She ached that she couldn't use the larger space for freedom — that she had created a boundary and a blockage.

Encounters between soft and sharp

The frame for freedom

These drawings and the insights from observing them led her to work on accepting the softness within her, on the ability to let emotion and softness come out without fear. Slowly, with the sessions, she went through a process of change that was expressed in her drawing style: from rows and lines in Panda colors, Ariella began drawing soft shapes in smeared chalk colors. "Like a caress," she said about them.

Rows and lines

It's okay to bring the softness out

Already touching the ground

Observing Ariella's drawings at this stage of the therapy reveals that her drawing touches the ground more (the bottom of the page symbolizes this) and the brown earth color was added to her drawings. This touching of the ground gives confidence and also allows her to touch the more vague and unknown things.

Ariella learned to see and accept the contribution of the opposites within her — strength and softness, knowing and not-knowing, order and mess, freedom and structure. We both now hope that from this learning, accepting, and embracing place, Ariella will be on her way to becoming the green and safe tree she aspired to reach.

Ariella is in the middle of the journey. And she is making her way to fulfill her dream. I hope that from what is written, one can also see the interest, value, and meaning in the process — in the journey as standing on its own. The description and demonstration were made with Ariella's consent.

The requests and reasons for going through a process through art are many and different from person to person. Sometimes they will be concrete like the one described, and sometimes it's a desire to be more aware, a desire to draw more freely, to be happier, more at peace, stronger, more communicative, and more. The manner of therapy will also be different. The difference will be woven according to the connection created and the different needs of each participant in the journey.