Sometimes words are too much or too little, but they say a picture is worth one thousand.

Art transcends language and allows for expression and exploration through personal, meaningful metaphors and symbols. We may more safely relate to others and difficult material through visual metaphor.

The COVID-19 pandemic threatens the world with fear and loss. It hurts, and it’s hard to talk about. Art-making has advantages for processing trauma and enhancing resilience by inspiring creativity and facilitating integration. All elements of the artistic process and product reflect the artist’s inner life. Because art is visual and tangible, making art helps the artist identify and process any feelings he or she has or is likely to develop.

Recently, some of us got together for an open-studio style Zoom event. Using whatever art materials we already had in our homes, we enjoyed creating art together while apart. Here are some pictures of art we started.

Enjoy,
Kathryn Moreno, LCAT, ATR-BC

 

 

For me, a coloring book “journal” is a uniquely meditative and relaxing exercise in sweeping, repetitive motions layering color, and it’s a therapeutic way to process and just be, non-judgmentally. It’s freeing to not allow the superego to impose accountability to make real art. Unconscious color selection informs what I see, where I have been, and where I am going, all within a gentle holding environment that I can close up and tuck away for safekeeping and private delight. The choice of black roses adorning a green gown was the final decision for this picture, and I’m guessing that was a subtle representation of mourning during a period of new growth.

Tricia Brock is a fifth-year graduating candidate in the final stages of becoming a Licensed Psychoanalyst.

 

 

   

Collage made with sheet music, torn magazine images, and oil paint.

Kathryn Moreno, LCAT, ATR-BC, is a creative arts therapist in private practice in Manhattan. She is currently completing independent study during her second year of analytic training at MIP.     

 

 

I’ve been making art on and off throughout the pandemic. I use acrylic paints and let my brush lead the way without thinking too much. I had the same mindset during Kate’s Zoom session.

I played with my strokes, intending to create an abstract design. Without thinking I created a bat-looking shape and some clouds. As we sat discussing our pieces, I immediately remembered a dream I had weeks ago.

I was up in the clouds and talking with one of my patients. We chatted on heavenly pillows, in a celestial palace. We were safe here, but I could feel danger lurking outside of our fortress. I suddenly saw a bat-like gargoyle weaving in and out of the clouds.

It was interesting to see that I was led to the same image during the Zoom. It makes me wonder if providing telehealth creates a safe, albeit, cloudy place. Meanwhile, COVID-19 is flying around us, outside our windows.

Lindsay Nejmeh, LMHC, is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City. She is trained as a Mental Health Counselor and works with adults and children. She is a second-year candidate in the License Qualifying Program (LQP) at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis.    

 

 

Jung’s concept of collective unconscious was born out of his vision of his “dream house,” which was built upon a cave containing two decomposing skulls. The skull is a universal archetype for death. How satisfying it is, in this period of fear and death, to paint this deer skull (which I found on a hike) – and make it into something more cheerful!

Tom Pollak, LCAT, has been an art therapist at Montefiore’s Mount Vernon psych unit, Rockland Psychiatric Center, and Four Winds Hospital.    

 

To contribute to the special series on COVID-19, send blog posts of up to ~1,000 words (read full submission guidelines here) to Analysis Now blog co-editors Justine Duhr at justinetduhr@gmail.com and Robert Levin at rob@robertlevinlcsw.com.   

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this post, we recommend:
Special Series on COVID-19 by Justine Duhr, MFA, and Robert Levin, LCSW
Thinking Analytically in the Time of COVID-19 by Sandra Green, LCSW
Minding COVID-19: Re-establishing Communication Through Mentalizing by Troy Becker, Psy.D.
How Can We Wake up From This Bad Dream? by Irina Simidchieva
An Elegy for My Office From a Psychoanalyst Working Remotely by Blair Casdin, LCSW
Psychoanalysis in the Time of Plague: This *Is* Psychoanalysis! by Veronica Csillag, LCSW
Uncommon Teletherapy Suggestions by Andrew Hartz, Ph.D.
“This is Just to Say”: Poetry Challenge by Debora Worth, LCSW
Immunity? by Constance Morrill, MIA, LCSW-R
Lights. Camera. Clinic. by Aanchal Bhatnagar