Artist’s Date
I went to the “20 Years of the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year Awards” exhibition at the National Archives. This had lots of impressive wildlife photos, including a couple of the leafy seadragon.
Reflections
The theme for week 3 is “Discovering a Sense of Perspective”.
The part of this chapter that most caught my attention was a section titled “Art Is Therapeutic, Not Therapy”. Here, Cameron explores the difference between healing from therapy (which aims to transform our understanding of emotions and experiences) and healing from art (which adds to the world through direct self-expression).
Intuitively, I agree that the creation of a work expressing some of our inner complexity and individuality may be a more powerful (though usually less direct) path to healing than traditional approaches to therapy. Self-expression may not fix any particular problem, but instead it helps improve our life as a whole.
In The Border and Hedgerows, there’s a minor plot thread that reflects some of my own experiences (in a very altered form). And while this hasn’t resolved anything in real life, I do feel that being able to create a fictionalised version of my experience and share it has been helpful in a subtle way.
Related
Introductory post: “Walking in this World” diary: introduction
Previous post in this diary: “Walking in this World” diary: week 2