Making is my Therapy
It was a lockdown of 2 halves for me. The first six weeks after the British Prime Minister announced that we needed to stay at home to prevent the spread of coronavirus were something of a joy. A surprising and unexpected joy. Despite all of my paid work disappearing in a matter of days, I discovered an energetic and colourful creative freedom within the novelty of this new constraint. It was almost as if lockdown had absolved me of any of my adult responsibilities meaning that I could just piss around making stuff in the Art Bunker for no other reason than it was a fun thing to do. And that’s what I did. I’d wake up excited and full of ideas and bounce out of bed before even Poppy the dog had woken up. I’d start making stuff around 6.30am every morning and only put down my pens, papers or paints at the same time that evening. (Occasionally popping into the house to see the family, go for a run or take Poppy for a walk.) And the evenings felt special too. Cooking meals whilst listening to music before getting plentiful sleep in readiness to repeat it all again the next day.
Then, suddenly, it all changed. There was no particular reason. One morning I simply didn’t feel inspired. I felt trapped. I felt a rising anxiety or underlying dread about something that I couldn’t name. I didn’t wake early at 6am. Instead I struggled to open my eyes and get out of bed by 9. And I began to experience physical symptoms that made everything seem so much worse. My costochondritis flared up in a way that made me feel like I couldn’t take a full breath. Stomach pains and searing headaches became a daily occurrence and, rather than sitting in the Art Bunker feeling inspired, I slumped in my chair feeling very low. Physically and mentally drained. I didn’t know why I was feeling this way or what had caused the extreme shift. And I certainly had absolutely no idea what to do about it. All I could bring myself to do was to carry on making.
For me, making art is primarily a visceral, physical experience. The process is always infinitely more valuable than the output. Making is my way of making sense of the world and who I am in it. If somebody likes what I make then I consider it a bonus rather than an objective. I make just for me. However, for many years it was the opposite. Probably as a result of how art was taught at school I would try to start in my head with an idea or an image that would inevitably disappoint me when it manifested onto the page. This constant process of disappointing myself (and my teachers) led to me forming all sorts of tangled and spiky self-judgements about my abilities and worthiness as an artist and I eventually gave up in my early 20s.
It was only when I started to experience some mental health challenges in later life that I turned to my pens and paper as a method of self-care and sense-making. Or, to be more truthful, I have always experienced mental health challenges but later in life decided to experiment with making sense of them through art. To begin by simply making marks on a blank page, or making movements with a pastel or working with colours that instinctively expressed my here-and-now experience in a way that was beyond words. The freedom of having no objective other than following a line to see where it goes. A creative dance between raw expression and a response to what had been expressed that somehow deepened my awareness. Sometimes this process would yield something tangible like a word, or an insight. But much of the time it would simply be an expression of something that didn’t need any additional words or explanation in order to be helpful. As one of my wise teachers told me in later life “You don’t have to hand in your homework any more. That experience was just for you!” So nowadays making art is something I do simply because I find it helpful. Whether I am happy, sad, excited, despondent, determined or indifferent – I just immerse myself in making stuff with no other objective than to immerse myself in making stuff!
One of the biggest inhibitors I experience with those I coach, mentor or support is the belief that their making needs to be ABOUT something. Or FOR something. Fair enough, if you are making parachutes to sell to other people then there are particular qualities and standards that you might want to aim for. But making as a personal therapeutic practice needs no such objectives or measures. In fact, the very presence of these can make the whole process somewhat ineffective. South Korean writer Kim Young-ha once beautifully wrote “Devils come to earth, briefly transformed, to stop you from being artistic. And they have a magic question – ‘WHAT FOR?’ But art is not FOR anything. Art is the ultimate goal. It saves our lives.” It is a tragedy that this devilish question, posed to us by society when we are tender and malleable adolescents, confines our potent, uninhibited artistic expression to childhood.
So how might we reverse this? How might we liberate the process of therapeutic making from the dictatorship of logical, linear thought? That unquestioned adult sensibility that tells us something is only worth doing if we know in advance what we’re going to get from it. A good start would be to redefine the process of making in such a way that it doesn’t have to be about anything in particular. To see that it is not only OK, but advantageous to begin without the end in mind. To trust that the process and experience of making is the sole objective, irrelevant of what the output looks like. To allow ourselves to make just for us. To allow ourselves to make “just for nice”.
I write this blog towards the end of July 2020 and whilst it is still a very weird time, I no longer feel that I am experiencing the extremes that I did during the initial 12 weeks of lockdown. I feel more in balance. I feel better attuned to the subtle rhythm of the highs and lows of my human experience, knowing that both are wise teachers of equal value. The last five months have helped me realise even more clearly that making is my therapy. That making helps me make sense of the world in ways that I cannot easily express in words. And that is OK. There is a whole world beyond words that is full of wisdom, magic and mystery. All you need to do to experience it more fully is to let go.
Steve Chapman
Steve is an artist, writer and speaker who is interested in creativity and the human condition. You can find him on Instagram via @stevexoh and read more about his work via www.canscorpionssmoke.com