Intuitive Art Making: The Key to Inner Knowing and Emotional Release

“In art as in love, instinct is enough.”

 – Anatole France

Intuitive art making is a process of creating from your emotions, your unconscious, your body, and your soul. It is an innate and immensely healing process that is available to everyone.

Creating from a place of intuition and feeling can be an extremely liberating process. It bypasses the “thinking mind” and allows your body to speak through imagery without a filter. It is not about it looking “beautiful” or meeting some arbitrary standard of commercial art. There are no rules, no expectations, and you cannot do it wrong. What else in life will afford you that level of personal expression and freedom? Not much, my friends.

Intuitive art making allows you to uncover and explore aspects of yourself that you weren’t aware of. It allows for unconscious material to be made conscious, which allows for integration, emotional release, and, as Carl Jung described, “psychic wholeness”. Our experiences and emotions are transformed when they are expressed.

Everything we create is an extension and reflection of ourselves, a mirror of our souls. How we relate to the art we make is also reflective of how we are relating to a part of or our whole selves. The creative process allows us to work through and meet those lost parts, reclaim them, and heal our relationship with ourselves.

Tips to keep in mind:

• Go with how it feels, not looks. What colors, shapes, or images are you drawn to? How do they make you feel? What imagery holds a strong emotional charge for you? What imagery do you dislike or tend to push away?

  
  

• It may not make sense right away. This is especially true as you’re starting out. As you regularly engage in this process, you will start to see your personal symbols and images emerge and begin to read and understand the language of your soul and its messages.

  
  

• Trust the process. Don’t question yourself or your choices. If something grabs your attention, even if it doesn’t make logical sense, just go with it. Notice when the “thinking mind” is stepping in and judging or attempting to control the outcome.

  
  

• Keep moving. Don’t slow down to plan or overthink it. Keep making marks or gluing down papers. The more you slow down, the more likely that you will start to analyze, judge, and cognitively “control” the image.

Happy art-making, Creative Souls!