Colours are often associated with emotions – people talk of being green with envy or feeling blue when they’re sad. When it comes to grief, you might experience the dark depths of loss or despair, or the bright red of anger. But grief and loss can encompass a wide range of different emotions and stages, and using colour as a form of therapeutic art could offer a creative way to both express and process those feelings. Perhaps memories of your loved one bring to mind the bright yellows of a bunch of their favourite flowers, or the pinks of a sunset you once watched with them. Or you might paint a swirling black hole to signify their missing presence in your life. Just as there’s no right or wrong way to experience grief, there are no set rules as to how you choose to paint it onto canvas.
Art as therapy
Painting and using colours can be a way of creating a tangible representation of what is largely an internal experience. According to the British Association of Art Therapists, using art as therapy can ‘reduce distress, and improve social, emotional and mental health by promoting insight, self-compassion and a sense of agency and self-worth’. Researchers point out that grief and bereavement will affect nearly every individual at some point in their lives, and can have a huge impact on mental and emotional wellbeing. Art is a non-verbal form of expression, which could help you express complex feelings that are difficult to articulate verbally, or provide a cathartic emotional release for pent-up emotions.
Northern Irish artist Aly Harte has spent many years leading art therapy workshops, inspired by her own experiences of grief, to help others process emotions around loss, stress and trauma. She says you might simply start with the question, ‘What is it that makes me lift this paintbrush today?’. You might be looking to gain some sort of insight into your feelings, make emotional pain more manageable, pay tribute to a lost loved one by painting their favourite colours or place, or take your mind into a flow state to soothe anxiety.
Whether you choose to work with an accredited art therapist, attend a community life-drawing class or simply set out some paints and paper on the kitchen table, art can also be a form of connection – both to your inner self and to others – which can help reduce the feelings of isolation that grief can cause.
Mixing colours
Much of Aly’s own ‘explosive and expressive’ abstract work uses vibrant colours, and she says ‘even mixing colours can be a form of therapy’. Aly recommends starting with just five – the three primary colours of red, yellow and blue, as well as black and white. She usually recommends her students use acrylic paints, because they’re accessible and easy to work with, but says they don’t need to be expensive – any grade will get you started.
‘You could try mixing a colour to match your mood,’ she suggests. ‘Or challenge yourself to mix up 10 different shades of pink or green. Just try to enjoy the physical act of pooling the colours together.’
Start with the three primaries, then use white and black to create the deepest and brightest shades. ‘Mixing colours can be about bringing play back into your life,’ says Aly. ‘Colour brings conversation – if you mix red and yellow you get orange, but it will be different to someone else’s orange. Your purple will be different to someone else’s purple. It’s all about expression.’
Aly says that part of her creative work is about ‘challenging and changing the colour of grief’, explaining that during her own periods of grieving, she feels a desire to turn those feelings into colour. ‘Grief is born in the dark, but it also has so many contrasts, and you can show that through painting with colours,’ she explains. ‘Where there is darkness, there is also light.’
Getting started
When it comes to creating a visual representation of your feelings, Aly insists that you don’t need any prior artistic experience, or flare, to create something that is meaningful to you. Even if you haven’t taken an art class since school, you can still enjoy the therapeutic benefits. You might start in a sketch book, or buy some mixed-media paper from an art store, although Aly says, ‘I don’t care if you grab a sheet of printer paper if it gets you drawing something. Art should be accessible, and it can be fluid and scrappy.’
You could start with a loosening exercise, taking a pencil and simply drawing circles or figures of eight on a blank page, which Aly says ‘settles the brain’ and can even feel like a form of meditation. Then she recommends doing a quick ‘gesture drawing’, where you pencil in a few lines to mark out a rough outline of your painting. If you’re going to paint a landscape, you might sketch out where you want the horizon, mountains or beach to be. If you’re drawing a still life, such as a bunch of flowers or fruit on your kitchen table, you could mark the basic shapes of the vase, fruit or blooms.
When it comes to art therapy for grief, Aly often suggests trying a landscape or seascape, working from a photo or memories of a favourite place. ‘You might paint the horizon or headland, some waves, mountains, rolling hills, a beach or a favourite path,’ she says. ‘It could be about connection, escapism, happiness, familiarity or nostalgia. It could be a landscape that brings you to tears, or something that reminds you of a walk you took with someone years ago.’
If a landscape feels too daunting, try a still life. As Aly says, the beauty of setting something out in front of you to paint is that ‘it doesn’t move or go anywhere’.
You also don’t need to take all day about it or put yourself under any pressure to paint for a set length of time. Set a timer for 20 seconds of free-flowing circle sketching, or try a 15-minute abstract acrylic painting and see what happens. As you become more engrossed, art becomes a flow activity, and you may find hours sliding by without you even noticing. And you can keep your tools simple, using things you already have. You only need one brush to get started – although Aly says, ‘Do remember to change your water when it goes brown!’
Deeply personal
Unlike so many activities that take up people’s time in the modern world, such as watching television, listening to music or podcasts, or scrolling on a phone, which can feel passive, making art is an active way to spend your time and channel your feelings. But like grief, your art can be deeply personal – and you don’t have to show it to anyone if you don’t want to. Aly points out that current social norms often leave people feeling they need to show off their best selves on social media, display their work, seek praise, grades or validation. Your art doesn’t have to be like that. You could choose to keep your sketchbook as private as a journal, and you certainly don’t need to open up your work to any form of critique. Aly suggests ‘leaning out of perfectionism’ and simply giving yourself the freedom to create. ‘I love the saying “busy hands – open heart”,’ she says. So why not grab a paintbrush, three primary colours and see where your own hands and heart take you?
Follow Aly Harte on YouTube or Instagram @aly.harte. You can also find her writing about grief on Substack