Doodling has been one of my favorite ways to cope with pain. I started this exercise years back when I was recommended an art-therapy class for pain management. Little I knew that this class would help me much more than other treatments I had previously tried.
I took my first art-therapy class as a last resort in my fight against Lyme. When my physician suggested it, I thought he was joking and that the joke was on me. The first thing we were told by the art-therapist was to pick up a pen and scribble something on a page. Anything! Leave a mark on the white page. Draw lines. Draw circles. Anything we felt like. Just shut down the brain and let our hands take over for the following hour.
I remembered my first drawing looked a bit similar to a semi-abstract giraffe. I don't recall why a giraffe. Though throughout the years, I have seen the giraffe reappearing once in a way within my drawings or paintings.
Seeing the doodling enabled me to take my mind away from my symptoms, improve my mood, I continued to do this exercise. My doodles, the raw expression of my mind, helped me stay focused, grasp new concepts and retain information. At the beginning, the white page laying in front of me was a bit scary, but slowly it turned into a playing field for my brain, allowing me to revise, improve my creative thoughts, ideas and forget about the pain.
For a long time I did not consider it a form of art, nor dared to show it to others, because it was too personal, too childish, too silly, etc. In my mind, everyone was able to do it. To me it had a therapeutic value, not an artistic or an aesthetic one. Thus, it's only after several years that I started to post my drawings on social media and to my surprise to see that people actually like it.
Who would have ever though that I'll actually create a series of ink drawings as part of my Lyme awareness art series? Not me! So far my favorite mediums were acrylic paint and poetry. I guess we never know what tomorrow brings. Keeping an open mind helps us grow as a person and learn more about ourselves and the world around us.
The image above was realized with ink on Strathmore paper. If you'd like to see more of my neurographic art, visit my website.
check out my GALLEA online art gallery page HERE
or visit my website: lavipicu.com.
