Pat B. Allen - Art Is a Way of Knowing: A Guide to Self-Knowledge and Spiritual Fulfillment through Creativity

Allen has produced a wonderful book for anyone, artistic or not, who is interested in using art to know more about himself or herself.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt, Washington State University, Pullman, Library Journal

Art Is A Way of Knowing has a practical, hands-on, and experiential feel to it. It is like a guide book or a manual for those interested in self-exploration through creative activity. Allen persistently invites the reader to join her. I found her to be an encouraging and competent guide.

American Journal of Art Therapy

Finally, a self-help book that is true to the passionate and turbulent movements of the soul in the process of creation.

Shaun McNiff, Ph.D., author of Art as Medicine

ABOUT THE BOOK

Making artgiving form to the images that arise in our minds eye, our dreams, and our everyday livesis a form of spiritual practice through which knowledge of ourselves can ripen into wisdom. This book offers encouragement for everyone to explore art making in this spirit of self-discoveryplus practical instructions on material, methods, and activities such as ways to:

• Discover a personal myth or story
• Recognize patterns and themes in ones life
• Identify and release painful memories
• Combine journaling and image making
• Practice the ancient skill of active imagination
• Connect with others through sharing ones art works

Interwoven with this guidance is the intimate story of the authors own journey as a student, art therapist, teacher, wife, mother, and artistand, most of all, as a woman who discovered a profound and healing connection with her soul through making art.

PAT B. ALLEN, Ph.D., ATR, is an artist and a registered art therapist who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She produces workshops, events, and collaborative projects around the country and directs an online image community at www.patballen.com, where readers can post their images and writings, communicate with the author and one another, and subscribe to an electronic newsletter.

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For Tom and Gin

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1995 by Pat B. Allen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Allen, Pat B.

Art is a way of knowing/Pat B. Allen.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2326-6

ISBN 978-1-57062-078-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Art therapy. 2. ArtPsychological aspects. 3. Self-perception. 4. ImageryTherapeutic use. I. Title.

RC489.A7A42 1995 94-40385

700.19dc20 CIP

Contents

This book is both wonderfully concrete in its methods and examples, and totally aware of the unknowing essential to the art process. Artwork of this kind is a way of nonintellectual knowing, through emotion and body. It evokes in the soul an intuition of selfhoodat home in the mysteries of existence, renewable through change.

This is a book I needed to reread in order to gather its harvest, for the range and depth of its content are exceptional. Allens subject is image-making, artwork, as a way of knowing the life of the soul. She gives generous help about how to begin, materials, space, atmosphereand then teaches us to trust the process. It is the underground river that gives us life and mobility. It takes time to make the image through clay, paint, pastels, collage, found materials, and time for the image to ripen. The art process carries us free of conscious thinking and judging. This absorption in the process is what heals. It accesses another part of oneself, where the mysteries of pain and release, grief and anger and despair, longing and hope are present. Allens image work sustains her through experiences of death, birth, professional stress, family crises. One does this work for personal health, yes, but for the larger fabric of values in the culture as well. This fabric only shifts incrementally, as individuals do the difficult work of changing themselves. Allens life experience of image work helps to map the journey for us.

M. C. Richards

Images take me apart; images put me back together again, new, enlarged, with breathing room. For twenty years I have kept a record of my inner life in images, paintings, drawings, and wordssometimes haphazardly, sometimes more diligently, but continuously throughout my days as an art student, art therapist, teacher, wife, mother, and artist. I did this, I think, because I felt in a way that I didnt exist. My existence was marginal, uncompelling, because my feelings, necessary for a sense of meaning, were missing. Art making is my way of bringing soul back into my life. Soul is the place where the messiness of life is tolerated, where feelings animate the narration of life, where story exists. Soul is the place where I am replenished and can experience both gardens and graveyards. Art is my way of knowing who I am.

It is possible to give a very convincing portrayal of a life even with ones soul in exile. Only the meaning is missing. When I first began doing work with images, there were times when I thought I was insane, so unfamiliar to me was the chaos of human feeling. I have felt split off from sunlight and laughter even as I have stood in the sun and laughed with friends, and have thought no one else ever felt this way. Images have allowed me to reclaim some of what was lost in growing up, the ability to have feelings fully and in the moment. I dont believe that art cures or fixes; rather it restores the connection to soul, which is always waiting to be reclaimed.

Throughout this book I use the terms image, image making, and artwork more often than the seemingly simpler word art. There are value judgments inherent in the word art that tend to act as barriers for many people. There is good art and bad art, fine art and high art. All of these terms evoke an end product, a drawing, a painting, an object. Images, however, are a universal phenomenon that each of us experiences continuously in dreams, in our minds eye, when we hear music or read a poem or encounter a scent that evokes a memory. We all have many internal images of our self, of those we love and those we hate. We have images of people we have never met and places we have never visited. Art making is the process of giving these images form. The marks we make in this process of giving form need not be evaluated by any outside criteria but rather by our internal sense of what is true.

Making images is a way of breaking boundaries, loosening outworn ideas, and making way for the new. It is a form of practice, through which, like any spiritual discipline, knowledge of ourselves can ripen into wisdom. Images are not always beautiful; often they are raw and mysterious. They are not always comforting but can be exhilarating, challenging, provocative, even frightening at times.