UCF Healing Art Exhibit

This Thursday I will be part of the Healing Art Exhibition at University of Central Florida.  I have three paintings that I worked on over the last three years as a grad student of art therapy.  The paintings were all done with exploring paint in layers with mark making.  Some imagery arose from a line or shape that would appear and others because of metaphors and symbols that kept emerging in my studies. 

Flight of the Dragonfly investigated the emerging metaphor of the dragonfly in my life. The dragonfly has the capability to change flight directions at anytime.  As an art therapist, I have to meet clients where they are at and be ready to change directions at anytime to help clients fully express themselves through the arts.

The next painting titled “Trust the Process” was also done as painting exploration while studying at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods college as an art therapy graduate student.  Since the painting was done in layers I was able to explore the process abstractly until images emerged from the unconscious. I suspect reading Carl Jung had an influence on my work.  I felt as if I was blooming in art therapy so the bloom came about like the the thing I was needing to express.  A few days after I painted the bloom, my husband told me he saw a face. I could not see it for awhile and was astonished to find how obvious it was there when I finally saw it. In the photo it is even clearer than the real painting and to this day, I do not understand how it came to be. But this is the amazing part of the painting process when one is open to discovery.  I am still not sure about who the woman is in the painting as I have not asked that of the image as of yet.  In art therapy one can explore witness writing from the perspective of the painting and that will be how I will investigate the next two paintings on a deeper level.

This last painting was actually the first painting I explored in layers. This one was done with a trowel knife.  The title is “Active Imagination” and as I was painting it the image of a dark skinned woman in a lotus appeared. It is still a mystery to me who this woman is, but the waves that appeared in this painting as well as paintings that have come after this one represent the awareness of waves of emotion and lucid dreams.

Thanks for reading!  Laura Bohn artist’s website