Art As Therapy

July 21, 2016

This is a series of sketches completed in June and July. My family and I took a trip to the Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Door County in Wisconsin. Both of these areas border Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. They both offer beautiful shorelines and wilderness.

Some I will use as studies for later work and some were just for fun. It's good to experiment with different colors and effects and that's why I sketch for studies.

The other reason I sketch and paint is because it is therapeutic. It's tremendously effective at relieving stress and calming the mind. I think that's why adult coloring is so incredibly popular right now. It brings peace. It invokes joyful feelings from childhood. It helps me forget the troubles of the world, if only for a few hours.

Here's how it works for me. I stretch enough of those calming, peaceful moments together and I start to notice a change in my life. I start to see more beauty in the world. I'm less cynical and more excited about daily life and almost everything else. I have these moments where I'm just thinking about how lucky I am to be able to live in these times. To be able to create and I start to see opportunities instead of obstacles.

Yes, art can have that kind of impact on a persons life. Here is a short video I made of my Art Adventure to the Great Lakes.