Listening through the Layers

The first steps include spilling out personal pain through mixed media art.

When the page looks "done" add layers of paint and name the insight gained.

  (Mixed media) art journaling helps one listen for meaning, experience healing, and (re)experience the creativity of being a child. It is during the process of art that one is “helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure” (L'Engle, Walking on Water).  Artist Robert Henri argued that “art tends towards balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, [and] the economy of living—very good things for anyone to be interested in.” In explaining what he called “the art spirit,” Henri proposed that the arts were invented to capture—or express—the significant moments in life which are those moments of greatest happiness, wisdom, and vision. He called art “sign-posts on the way to what may be[;] sign-posts toward greater knowledge” (Henri, The Art Spirit). One of the great benefits of mixed media art and theological reflection is that the process provides a time, a space, and a place (the art journal) to listen. Listening opens a path to healing.