The Non-Ordinary – Part X: Connecting With Creativity – Visual Arts

Sketching as an Oasis

Living in Los Angeles in the late 60’s, at the tail end of the LA riots, was unsettling. And added to that was the turmoil going on inside my own head at that time. I was living in a studio apartment, literally one room, with my friend and her fiancée. That alone was a high stress scenario. But even that had some deeper complexity. We had landed in the LA apartment unexpectedly after some quite chaotic events.

My friend and I had been renting from her mother, a little place behind the main house, where her mother lived. One afternoon we found her in the garage wrapped up in a dirty carpet, moaning inconsolably. Physically she was fine, but something had gone wrong in her mind. We coaxed her out of the garage and over the next couple of days the moaning turned to incomprehensible mutterings. Those eventually turned violent. We were so young, so unequipped to deal with the twists that life can bring at a moments notice. Our way of dealing with the trauma was to simply escape. We loaded the car with our possessions, took off down the road with my friend’s mother standing in the street in her nightgown yelling and shaking her fist.

Once settled in the studio apartment, I was working two jobs in an effort to provide more privacy for the happy couple and to give myself more time outside of those shrinking four walls. On many days I chose to play hooky from my day job and instead rode one bus route after another, an unattached observer touring the Downtown area. I rode with sketchbook in hand and whiled away the hours in creative bliss, sketching mostly old building. Some of the architecture was truly beautiful.

The rush of creative juices was a healing salve. It washed over stresses, soothed jangled nerves and calmed the onslaught of unrest. I’m not a stranger to being overwhelmed. My path has been strewn with its share of soul-crushing trauma, which means I’ve had to make a habit of finding my oasis where I could. And it’s always been found inside of me. During that season of my life in LA, I found an inner oasis in the midst of civil unrest in the middle of Downtown Los Angeles while sketching rather absent-mindedly.

This kind of creativity, that does not demand intensity of focus, that allows our being to meander undisturbed, may produce Alpha waves.

Alpha waves are middle of the spectrum brain waves that are present in wakeful relaxation, in some REM sleep, in pre-sleep, pre-waking drowsiness that begins to access the unconscious, and in mindfulness meditation. Alpha waves are often associated with creativity.

Perhaps this is what Carl Jung, founder of analytic psychology, was tapping into as he created mandala paintings (a circle with repetitive patterns). He began this endeavor during a period in his life when he was confronted with his own unconscious reality. Cathy Malchiodi PhD, LPCC, LPAT, ATR-BC, REAT, states in her “Cool Art Therapy Intervention #6: Mandala Drawing” article (March 17, 2010 psychologytoday.com) that Jung created mandala paintings and sketches “From 1916 through 1920…” which “he felt corresponded to his inner situation at the time.” Jung’s personal experience of journeying into the deep places of his own psyche are recorded in his Red Book written during the same time period.

Jung modeled the relationship between visual art and the non-ordinary as a path to wholeness.

How might you find wholeness by joining visual art with the non-ordinary?

Writing Prompt for the Week: Creating Visual Art in Troubled Times