Subject: Art and Abuse Project
Sender: Sheena
Message: Me and my school are doing this project called 'Passion Project' and we all have different topics and my topic is 'Art and Abuse' so i was wondering if you could give me more information, if you could, about my topics if you could respond to me thank you for reading this message.
From Country: United States
Silvia Hartmann responds:
Hi Sheena
I knew an artist who had been abused as a young boy and he painted for years and years the same picture - a big self portrait face of himself, with the eyebrows and nose a huge cross with a bleeding Jesus on it.
Over and over and over again.
Over the time I knew him, the paintings got ever more jaggedy, ever more blood splattered, ever more black, ever more chaotic.
Until the day came, I walked into his studio, and there he is yet again, stabbing at the umpteenth canvas with a brush held like a knife.
I shouted at him, "For the love of God, STOP IT.
"You've been doing this for YEARS and it's not getting better. It's getting worse.
"So you were abused by a priest when you were a child. It happened. We all know this.
"How about you stop painting the problem, and start painting THE SOLUTION?!"
He stopped, and turned around, his mouth open.
"How would I do that?" he asked, incredulously.
I said, "I don't know! Ask different questions! If your solution had a colour, what colour would it be?"
He nearly screamed, "It would be blue! Gold and blue!"
And then he ran and started the first of his new paintings, and I walked away with ART SOLUTIONS.
People in modern art love to do psychotherapy style art "therapy" by regurgitating their "pain" onto a canvas. But it never gets done, because it's not a bucket of pain that will eventually go empty. It's a generator instead that gets ever stronger with use and becomes a generator of more and more pain!
And what happens when you then pass on all that pain to other people? Of course, all the people out there who have to see/feel that in exhibitions or hanging it on the wall, get more pain out of it as well.
The question I want to ask each and every artist, be they abuse victims or not, is this.
Do YOU want to bring even more pain into the world as an artist?
So many artists LOVE to get "an emotional reaction" out of their audiences by documenting pain, misery, decay, horror, whatever.
All of that is nothing but not only regurgitating the pain yet again, but ADDING to the mess of pain and negativity that already exists.
By all means, do ONE painting or work of any type of art to "express how bad it is."
When you're done, BURN IT.
And then ask yourself, if the SOLUTION to the problem had a shape, had a colour, had a movement, had a sound, had a voice ...
That's Art Solutions.
That's what I do.
I hope that helps,
With best wishes,
Silvia x
That's the "art therapy" version of Art Solutions in a nutshell.
The energy of "abuse paintings" or any kind of "abuse art" - demonic nightmares from the classics included! - transmits negative and disturbed energies. This can be extremely dangerous for artists who enter into a feedback loop with their own pain on an ongoing basis.
That's not just so for visual artists, but for all artists, no matter if they write songs from states of the deepest misery, or weld steel together in these states.
Entering deep negative high stress states is exhausting and very bad for mental health as well as physical health.
Surrounding yourself constantly with your problems is extremely bad for you - so don't do it anymore.
Step away from the canvas and instead of wanting to share all that pain, start looking for the SOLUTIONS, the REMEDIES, the HEALING you so obviously still need.
The beautiful thing is that art is absolutely the most wonderful, most powerful, most personal way to find YOUR HEALING.
There has to be a healing intention, and we truly need to learn to ask the Art Solutions question.
This is across the board, and all the time. Photography students love to photograph bedraggled homeless people. It's a good route to good marks in art school, a lovely social comment, yada, yada ..
Photograph THE SOLUTION to homelessness. Even start to think in that direction.
Artists are the leaders of thought and philosophy in society. We're not here to be press reporters who document how bad it all is!
We are here to present the CREATIVE SOLUTIONS.
So yeah!
Art Solutions.
Artists, change the world!
