So while doing Inktober, I happened to run across a prompt that seemed innocent and easy for me to do. Yet when given to someone else their interpretation was completely different than mine was, and because I knew the reasoning behind the picture, it brought me to tears for a good 5 minutes. After thinking long and hard on it I decided to write this post on one of the lessons I teach my puppy pack called "changing your perspective" I hope it might help change yours or at least give you something to think about.
Sometimes even art can be therapeutic and healing. However it can have unintended side effects as well that, while they were not foreseen nor meant to happen, they do. They are healing and painful at the same time.
A good example of this would be something as innocent as you are given a word to draw your version of. No judgement or anything is based upon it, just want to see what you can come up with. So an innocent word that everyone else would see one way can look completely different from someone else who has experienced something, or is still going through it now, from a different view point. Lets take the word "Popular for example. If I asked you to draw the word Popular what comes into your mind? . . . .
Now a lot of people would think maybe high school days of "the in crowd", cheerleaders, jocks, and leaders of various groups and how closely tied together they all are. Or maybe a work group of friends and how popular they are at work because of the tight friendship they have with everyone around them. Maybe even a famous movie star or music singer they adore who is popular at that moment in time with millions of adoring fans. All very great examples of popular things right? From one side of the fence of course it is.
However, on the other side of the fence things are much differently viewed. Popular can be viewed as a group of people all hanging out together having a great time, while one person is outcasted, shoved to the side and ignored. Where that one person is never seen but puts in all the effort to be liked, tries hard to fit in, yet never does. In the high school picture it might be "popular" to be picking on the lone kid. At work the in crowd ignores the lone worker and keeps only to their group, never inviting in the other person and the picture will show that one person working away surrounded by darkness while the others are bathed in light and joy.
Pictures really can tell a thousand words and be very healing for the spirit and soul, but when that pain is transferred correctly into a drawing, the pain can be clearly seen by all and it is then felt which can cause pain. Some of the greatest works of art in history were done at the height of emotion from the artist and the finished work of art reflects that. It takes a very brave person to put their feelings into their art and then decide to share it with another person. I beileve that it is a form of intimacy not many would agree with me about, more so because while it is not sex, is it much deeper than flesh. It is raw emotion and true feelings which mean a lot more than anything physical could ever mean. It takes true courage and trust to expose yourself to another person and make yourself so vulnerable to them that you show your true inner feelings and soft spots where it is easy to hurt you, trusting that they wont abuse this knowledge. That is the true meaning of love and devotion between two beings of higher intellect.
