Article written by Lauren Johnston.
Visual Arts is not just a class you took back in school, it’s not just a way for people to make money from art they created at home or in a work shop, it’s not just a university course, while it may be all that, there’s more to it, a deeper side of it. Many artists use it as an escape, a place to feel safe and free, something to do to express themselves when words can’t quiet describe how they are feeling. It’s something that means a lot to them, it’s something they love doing that brings them joy and happiness, a sense of calm. Visual Arts has lots of benefits to help with mental health which is an ever-growing topic and issue in today’s society, I have learnt from firsthand experience.
I took art lessons from the get go, it had always been and still always is my favorite subject, maybe make that tied with music. Nothing made me happier than seeing that I had Art class that day for school. Especially in high school when life was tough as for me. Things weren’t pretty at home and the space inside my head wasn’t that kind either. I took Visual Art Studies, Photography, Multimedia and General Art and Music through school, I used these classes to my benefit. I took them and used them as a distraction to get me through the day, after a while I realized that there’s a lot more people out there doing the same thing I am doing and it’s our way of coping. I wasn’t ever really sure what to tell my psychologist but I sure as hell knew what I felt like drawing, painting, sketching, etching, photo shopping etc, it helped a lot, turned my artwork into something unique and special to me, to the teachers it may not have been much but to me, it was a story. That’s what I love about art, it’s a story of someone’s struggles, of someone’s happiness and of their journey. Visual Art is an expression of feelings and interest, people tend to use whatever creative media their heart desires to create a master piece. Over the years I have continued to do art and express my feelings and the things in life that I am interested in and it has greatly improved my mental health, I have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety for a few years now and art has helped control these issues I have. I have used art to express some of the toughest times of my life and some of the best.
Having an ongoing battle in your head is never fun. Mental health destroys a person if they can’t get the proper help that they need, I have experienced people close to me taking their own life because they couldn’t deal and the help they were getting was minimal, there’s also not a lot we can do as it costs to go talk to someone and get the proper help you need, it costs to buy the pills that do nothing but numb you so you can’t feel anything. Many people don’t know that there are a few places that offer free or bulk billed psychologists, these places include Headspace, some general practitioners and some bulk billed doctor’s surgeries. I attended Headspace three and a half to nearly four years and it helped me majorly, after attending for a year and a half I was offered to join in an Arts therapy group, which is a group of people aged 12-25, which is the age group that can attend headspace, that would meet once a week and draw whatever their heart desires. After completing the art work we were working on they would be hung up around the art room and on the windows for everyone to look at and talk about.
Having an escape to let your imagination run free while you are dealing with mental health is probably one of the best things that I can recommend to someone with mental health. If you don’t have mental health, imagine this, imagine having a voice in your head that sounds exactly like you, telling you that you aren’t good enough, that your work isn’t good enough to continue working, having to doubt every single thing that you do and constantly putting you down, imagine being too tired to get out of bed of a morning for work even though you just slept a numerous amount of hours, imagine not wanting to do go out anywhere even just down to the shops to get bread because that little voice is telling you that something bad is going to happen or you’re going to somehow f**k something up, the list goes on and on of all the little day to day activities that everyone does without issue. You can’t get into a routine and you can’t just block it out or forget about it. Mental health is a fight, a fight within yourself that no one can see or hear about, imagine going through that every day and not having a way to release it, that’s what Art brings to people. Yes, people make money from it and yes there’s much more to do with Art but for someone like me, art plays a big part in my life, whether it’s a little scribble of something or if it’s an art piece that takes days to finish.
Without Art, the world would be plain and boring, you wouldn’t have any pictures to buy and hang up in your house, there would be no art galleries, pictures wouldn’t exist, and everything would be a plain bare wall. What Brisbane’s Art culture has done is they took that plain wall and used it as an open expression of emotion and imagination. They invited everyone to create and from that we now have world renowned artists who just like us went through the same battles as I am going through and many others before and after me.
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