I did some art therapy today. Here’s my piece. The session was about processing grief however we might define it, and we were to use water, hodgepodge, and these colored bits of tissue paper that bleed ink when dabbed or spritzed with moisture.
I knew I wanted to use squares and grabbed a stack and two large pieces of red and black and started with the shape they made when I’d set them on the desk. I was initially focused on how I felt, but as I repeated the red and black motif, I started thinking of dad and the associations those colors have with our hometown. So I started to add white. Very soon, associations with Palestine emerged too, so I added a single green square and used the ink that seeped out of that as paint for quick, angular brushstrokes. Then another green square felt appropriate.
At this point, my anxious and angry energy was turning into sadness, so I scrunched up a blue square and used it to draw streaks down the page, starting at the top left corner. This had a couple of connotations in my mind, and soon, a feeling of calm emerged like a bubble of air rising to the surface. I fumbled around for one last element to add and decided to get back up and pick out a single pink circle, adding it to the bottom of the composition.
And then, all of a sudden I realized that the picture wanted to be turned upside down. That’s what you see here. It felt good.