This is why art therapy works. How has art healed you?
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Thursday, October 30, 2025
Thursday, February 09, 2023
Interview with Teen Mental Health Society about Art Therapy, Creativity, and the Psychology of Art
The podcast that I interviewed with recently on the TMHS Show is finally live! I spoke with host Aayushi Kulsunge with the Teen Mental Health Society about the psychology of art, creativity, and art therapy. Tune in here!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nC6grY7YjZSKzjSAZbHc4?si=45ifBLlVSD2iO_VRRR44Xg
Wednesday, June 08, 2022
Art Helps Ukrainian Artists Express Themselves During War
Art is something that can express things beyond words and process traumatic experiences like war. Ukrainian artists share some of their artwork made while their country is under attack to express themselves through creativity.
https://birdinflight.com/plitka/20220311-hudozhniki-zobrazhuyut-vijnu.html
Drawing is My Only Language: Ukrainian Artists Portraying the War
Ira Gryshchenko
March, 12 2022
While the war is still raging, there is hardly any time for reflection. But for many artists, creativity became their only way to speak out, even under these gruesome circumstances. Bird in Flight reached out to Ukrainian artists, asking them to show their works about war and tell their stories.
Kinder Album, artist
There will be a painting that shows our victory, for sure.
Drawing is my way to live through this reality together with all my people. It helps me to control my anxiety and panic, keeps me focused and channels my thoughts in a constructive direction. It’s my contribution to our common fight.
As for now, I have illustrated my experience of sitting in a shelter with young kids, elderly people, and pets. I have painted women, who stop armored vehicles with their bare hands, crowds of refugees on railway stations, burning houses — all the things that break our hearts. I’m planning to carry on with this series, and I’m sure that there will be a painting that shows our victory.
Vlada Ralko, artist
Drawing is not a weapon for me, it’s what keeps me alive.
I felt numb in the first week of war. I still have no words, except for a plea to close our sky and help us with weapons’ supplies. The whole world clearly sees what’s happening now. They see it in every detail. How many more murdered kids and mass graves in Mariupol do they need? How many Ukrainian cities have to be ruined for the world to join this unprecedented violence against our country with real actions, not just words?
Drawing is my only language now. This is how I’m saying what I want to say. It’s not my weapon, it’s what keeps me alive.
Anatolii Belov, artist
I have neither time, nor materials to create “works”. All I have is my sketchbook.
These sketches show my immediate reaction to the war. I draw them in my sketchbook, which I carry around and use it to put in my thoughts and to-do lists. I took this sketchbook with me, alongside other first-necessity things, when I fled Kyiv to a safer place. It contains all important addresses and phone numbers, so it’s a big help.
Now I have neither time, nor materials to create “works”. All I have is my sketchbook. One of the drafts is dedicated to Putin and all Russian people. I put an equation mark between them. I think that the war in Ukraine should be blamed not only on Putin, but on all the Russians, who let him rule their country. “It’s not Russia, it’s Putin who did it”. That was Kateryna Dyogot’s, a well-known Russian critic and art manager, comment on the shelling of the Holocaust Memorial Babyn Yar. Such a reaction of detachment and not understanding their own responsibility for the war in Ukraine says a lot. And I made a sketch of this episode, which shows Putin’s head growing bigger and bigger with rage and wickedness.
The second drawing is my curse for a Russian monster-soldier and his whole family. He stormed into a free country that didn’t call for him. My fury is encapsulated in this sketch. I don’t like to be furious, but that’s what I’m feeling right now and I have every right to feel this way.
Danylo Movchan, artist
I can’t say anything. I can only draw one watercolor a day. I have no words.
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Flow State from Creating Art Facilitates Healing
One of the main elements of art therapy and creating art is entering the flow state. That is something that was more recently discovered by my friend Lauren Zalewski / Gratitude Addict and she found this artist who has used her own art as a way of processing her grief from multiple losses. She posted this video of this artist's TED talk on using art to find flow, and how flow helps healing.
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
The Art of the Unplug by Gratitude Addict Lauren Zalewski
Thank you so much, Lauren Zalewski, for sharing your journey in using art in a mindful way to find greater joy and wellness! It warms my heart to see you discover how art works for you in some of the most unexpected ways! Thank you also for sharing with so many other people who can benefit from engaging in many art forms for themselves for their own well-being.
#art #mindfulness #artforwellness
Read her post and blog post from the link below!
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My latest piece on how my unexpected week-long vacation turned into a STAYcation and the profound GRATITUDE-boosting and mindful week I had when I decided to UNPLUG!
Thank you Lacy Mucklow, MA, ATR-BC, LPAT-S, LCPAT, ATCS for blessing me and my group with incredibly healing advice on using art for mindfulness and emotional wellness! Your words have resonated deeply with me and so many others!
Enjoy!
“THE ART OF THE UNPLUG” – FINDING GRATITUDE ON MY WEEK LONG “STAYCATION!”
An excerpt from her post (thanks for the mention!):
Ironically, the week prior to this vacation, I interviewed a famous art therapist and author on my live broadcast, “Gratefully Living the Chronic Life.” Lacy Mucklow is a New York Times bestselling author and has put out numerous adult coloring books, one of them entitled, “Be Grateful and Color.” She was an incredible guest who shared with us for the hour about how we can use art for healing. Her underlying message was that art is personal, there is no right or wrong way to do it, and it is an incredibly mindful and healing tool we can all use in our lives. She talked about overcoming our fear of doing something “wrong” and not holding back. Her message really resonated with me and made me want to paint even more.
Read the entire story here:
Read the entire story here:
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
"Gratefully Living the Chronic Life" features Lacy Mucklow on Live Show
I'm honored that Lauren Zalewski/Gratitude Addict contacted me to be a part of her show, "Gratefully Living the Chronic Life," to talk about art therapy as well as how creating art can help those dealing with chronic pain. Tune in live this Thursday, August 12th at 8 pm ET.
"Join me LIVE this Thursday, August 12 at 8pm EST for our latest episode of "Gratefully Living the Chronic Life!" My special guest this week will be art therapist and NY Times bestselling author, Lacy Mucklow, MA, ATR-BC, LPAT-S, LCPAT, ATCS.
I'm so excited to have Lacy joining me for the hour where she'll be sharing her expertise of art as therapy and how we can use it to boost our GRATITUDE and overall emotional wellness!
Enjoy art but don't consider yourself "artistic?" Me too! Lacy will be sharing with us some simple ideas on how art can (and is!) accessible and doable for anybody and why we should be exploring our creativity to open our eyes to the beauty that life has to offer and to heal from emotional pain.
About Lacy Mucklow, MA, ATR-BC, LPAT-S, LCPAT, ATCS
"Lacy is an art therapist who has been practicing in the Washington, DC area since 1999 and currently works in private practice with all ages and in partial hospitalization with active duty service members. Lacy obtained her MA in Art Therapy from The George Washington University and holds a BA in Psychology with a Studio Art Minor from Oklahoma State University. She is a Licensed, Board Certified Art Therapist and is an Art Therapy Certified Supervisor.
Lacy is also a New York Times bestselling author and National Bestseller with her coloring book series for adults ("Color Me Calm," "Color Me Happy," "Color Me Stress-Free," "Color Me Fearless," "Color Me to Sleep," and "Color Me Grateful") and has also authored an art journal for mothers and their children to communicate through art in response to prompts in "Mom and Me: An Art Journal to Share, Connect, and Create." She has been interviewed globally for magazines, newspapers, and podcasts about the adult coloring phenomenon and its benefits for people and has presented for the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program and was featured on "CBS Sunday Morning." To help people further reduce their stress, Lacy has also released a mindfulness meditation album entitled "Lavender Dreams," and is releasing her second album, "Lavender Destinations," this year - both with original guided imagery and music."
Lacy will be on hand with us for the hour to share her expertise, ideas, and to answer any questions or comments you may have!!!
LIVE viewers will be entered to win a free, autographed copy of one of Lacy Mucklow's coloring books, "Be Grateful and Color: Channel Your Stress into a Mindful, Creative Activity"!!
**episode will be recorded for later viewing.**
Event:
We had a great time and the hour went by quickly! Watch a recording of the broadcast here:
Saturday, May 15, 2021
Blogger Recounts Mental Health Journey and Creativity
I was contacted a while back from a blogger to check out her site called "Creating My Odyssey" as she started to rebuild her creativity and talk about her mental health experiences. She gave me permission to share one of her entries...and perhaps we will see more of her in the future with collaborative blogs!
Dried Up
When I was depressed, I didn't want to create art, and I felt really disappointed as an adult when I felt that way. As a moody teen and early twenties at home, my mother would say: 'When you feel like that, you should paint.' I appreciate her sentiment now, but I just didn't want to paint, or do anything artistic. She couldn't possibly understand because she wasn't made that way, and she never would. At least she tried, bless her.
But, as an adult, although, when depressed, I didn't have the inner spark to want to create art. I was happy to write though. That was easy. I had had light hearted anecdotal articles published too. And I could write exactly how I felt, particularly if I felt embarrassed and couldn't verbalise what I was thinking, especially if the thought concerned Husband.
For instance, I felt sad about my hobby, the wild west. What? You may well ask. (See what I mean about embarrassment?) I wanted to be a cowgirl, a rough 'n tough, smokin', cursin', drinkin', sharp shootin' frontierswoman. Not stuck at home, looking after family. And I couldn't indulge that hobby much because I didn't have the energy and also I felt out of it because of anxiety among the more intense living history re-enactors who I was anxious may judge (some did, because I was portraying an unconventional female character).
Husband, insightfully, had said long ago when I began to head into depressions, that he could see my hobby rearing its head and being the subject of my depression. I'd be obsessed with something (I was good at being obsessed with things) and the wild west was it. I was writing my novel (about a cowgirl, naturally...) and that did help, although, of course, I wanted my book to be perfect. So, yes – that was a subject I had to write about to make sense of it.
I had considered art therapy. To paint, draw or collage how I felt. That didn't work either. I didn't want to do any of that. In order to express how I felt, I wrote. If I did do anything artistic, the subject would be anything I would normally do, nothing to do with depression or anxiety. That was what writing did for me.
But I did, so much, want to be artistic. And I wanted to be happy working in my 'creative space' (I was too embarrassed – that word again – to call it an art studio) in our conservatory. But I wasn't, for a long time, happy working there. I'd be okay for a short time, then depression would gradually swallow me up. So I wrote a lot, about lots, and not in my creative space. It wasn't until really recently that I began to feel good about being there and being creative. It's taken this long.
And I'm delving into dark, dusty corners and discovering artwork that I'd done in the dark and distant past and forgotten about. 'Wow! That's good!' I've thought, occasionally. No time for modesty, thank you. Anyway, shoving modesty aside, I'm uploading them onto Facebook and my blog and getting lovely responses to them. I'm also on the verge of recreating and organising my art area. And I'm beginning to get quite excited about it. A plant or flowers here, a water feature there, paints here, pencils there, sketchbooks here, boxed canvases there...
Yay! Artistic me is coming back!
Thursday, April 22, 2021
Is Art Therapy the Best Treatment for PTSD?
It was nice to come across this article, as it supports the effectiveness of art therapy for mental health treatment, especially for PTSD. I hope that the knowledge of art therapy continues to be known around the world as a integral treatment that is on par with or even exceeds the effectiveness of other therapies and should be included in all treatment settings.
While some wounds, like scars, are visible to everyone, other wounds go unnoticed, trapped inside the human mind. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is commonly found in veterans. Unfortunately, many veterans don’t get the treatment that they need to recover from this invisible struggle. Oftentimes, veterans are afraid to speak up about their PTSD because they worry about the mental health stigma that accompanies it.
Melissa Walker, an art therapist at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), explains that PTSD shuts down the speech-language area of the brain and renders sufferers speechless with fear. This is the reason why so many of our nation’s bravest return home and suffer in solitude. Recovering from PTSD involves working through these traumatic experiences that the sufferers don’t usually want to talk about. Thankfully, Walker explains that art therapy could be the perfect treatment for PTSD.
Art as a Psychotherapeutic Therapy
Walker says in her TED Talk, “Art Can Heal PTSD’s Invisible Wounds,” that “the process of art therapy bypasses the speech-language issue with the brain. Art-making accesses the same sensory areas of the brain that encode trauma. Service members can use the art-making to work through their experiences in a non-threatening way”. Additionally, the Art Therapy article, “Art Therapy Helping Veterans,” states, “Sometimes a person just can’t face the fact that it is okay to leave the baggage of war behind. By expressing how one really feels in the pit of the soul through the use of art, perhaps the mind can begin to let go of the trauma by transferring the images and ideas to another object of their creation through the medium of art”.
Furthermore, art helps veterans suffering from PTSD reintegrate their left side of their brain with their right side. By creating artwork, PTSD sufferers can slowly learn to voice their experiences and move passed their fears. At the same time, art also allows veterans take their mind off the things that are bothering them at the same time that they are confronting them.
PTSD and Mask-Making
While Walker explains that all types of art can benefit veterans with PTSD, she’s seen the most success in mask-making. Perhaps the reason that mask-making is such an effective therapy is that it allows veterans to give a literal face to their fears. Walker says, “when service members create these masks, it allows them to come to grips, literally, with their trauma. And it’s amazing how often that enables them to break through the trauma and start to heal”.
Additionally, the article, “Healing Invisible Wounds: Art Therapy and PTSD,” by Renee Fabian, also reaffirms the success of mask making. Fabian writes, “Clients examine feelings and thoughts about trauma by making a mask or drawing a feeling and discussing it. Art builds grounding and coping skills by photographing pleasant objects. It can help tell the story of trauma by creating a graphic timeline”.
One of the veterans that Walker worked with at NICoE says that after making masks, he was able to speak up about experiences that he hadn’t been able to talk about for 23 years. He explains, “You sort of just zone out into the mask. You zone out into the drawing, and for me, it just released the block, so I was able to do it.”
In a world where there are so many different treatment plans for physical wounds, it’s nice to know that people are working to help those with invisible ones. Art Therapy could be the perfect treatment for PTSD.
Thursday, November 05, 2020
David Lee Roth Studies Japanese Sumi-e Painting
David Lee Roth's brush with art
Interesting....David Lee Roth decided to go the way of a different kind of art, specifically, he spent 2 years studying a particular type of Japanese art called Sumi-e. I always find it interesting when celebrities (or anyone, really) who have been in one kind of artistic career (acting, music) shift to discovering visual art as a new talent and passion they have.
"So, is your visual art, storytelling?"
"My visual art is complaining," he said. "It's graphic therapy. I say through my graphic art everything that a lotta folks say to the TV set when you don't think anybody's actually listening."
📷"Social Distance." DAVID LEE ROTH
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Museums Are Looking to Include Art Therapy for Patrons
Museums Embrace Art Therapy Techniques for Unsettled Times
Several institutions are preparing to reopen with an awareness of a new mission as people struggle with loss and unrest.
By Zachary
Small
Published June 15, 2020
Updated June 20, 2020
When the instructor asked him to describe his life in two words, Walter Enriquez chose carefully: fear and violence. He had spent decades as a policeman in Peru during the bloodiest days of armed conflict between government forces and guerrilla fighters that killed nearly 70,000 people. But he said that nothing could have prepared him for the extreme isolation and loneliness that come with quarantine. Having lost a handful of his friends and neighbors to the coronavirus pandemic, the 75-year-old retiree has turned toward art therapy programs offered by the Queens Museum to improve his mental health.
“We cannot go outside and enjoy our lives like before,” Mr. Enriquez said in Spanish, translated by his daughter. “But art helps us capture the past and relive positive experiences to get through pain and sadness.”
Every Thursday, he waits patiently at the computer for class to begin. For 30 minutes, he fidgets with the colored pencils, pens and papers at the desk inside his daughter’s apartment in Richmond Hill, Queens. And with those tools he creates scenes from his life based on prompts from his instructor: portraits of his mother and friends; images of Goyaesque, nightmarish demons representing disease that when rendered on paper feel less threatening.
Participants share their creations through Zoom, using their drawings and poetry (also part of the classes) to discuss life before and after the pandemic. Like thousands of other older New Yorkers, Mr. Enriquez has recently learned to use the internet to connect with the outside world. La Ventanita, one of the museum’s initiatives in response to the coronavirus pandemic, provides him a chance to socialize with other Spanish speakers through guided art lessons about self-expression.
A drawing by Walter Enriquez, who participates in a Queens Museum program created in response to the pandemic. “Art helps us capture the past and relive positive experiences to get through pain and sadness,” he said. Before the program, I felt very alone; now I can learn to produce art,” he said, adding that the program has revived his childhood aspiration of becoming a poet through the weekly prompts that ask him to create poetry based on his youth.
Although psychologists have long recognized the benefits of art therapy, which decades of scientific research suggests can improve moods and reduce pain, few American museums have devoted resources toward creating programs. But the demands of a grief-stricken public are now compelling cultural institutions around the country to create trauma-aware initiatives that put their art collections and educators at the forefront of a mental health crisis created by the pandemic and the worldwide protests over police brutality and racism after George Floyd’s killing.
And faced with plummeting revenue projections, industry leaders say they wouldn’t be surprised if museums turned toward art therapy for a new source of revenue or other funding opportunities. “Art therapy is typically funded by insurers,” Dina Schapiro, assistant chairperson for the Pratt Institute’s Creative Arts Therapy Department, said. “You already have patrons coming into museums and paying a fee. It would be especially good for people who are resistant to the traditional venues of therapy like an office.”
Although it doesn’t plan to charge for such programs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is looking to start art-therapy based initiatives. “We are adjusting to a new reality and looking into how we can use art history to reflect on shared experiences of isolation and trauma,” said Rebecca McGinnis, the museum’s senior managing educator for accessibility.
The Met plans to reopen as a safe space for New Yorkers in much the same way it did after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Curators are beginning to think about how exhibitions can be designed as trauma-aware to avoid triggering visitors. McGinnis has also prepared a running list of artworks that can help visitors soothe their post-Covid anxieties, including scenes of domestic tranquillity like Honoré Daumier’s “The Laundress” (1863), depictions of resilience like Faith Ringgold’s “Street Story Quilt” (1985), and memorials to the dead like a fifth century B.C. Greek grave stele of a little girl.
And in May, the museum revamped a teen event to focus on self-care and communication during the coronavirus crisis. Organized with the Bronx Museum and the Museum of Chinese in America, participants discussed the effects of the pandemic through writing prompts, dance workshops and zine-making.
“Art has a therapeutic impact for everybody,” Ms. McGinnis said. “People will be coming to us after experiencing loss; some for whom the disease has permanently impacted their bodies. How can we continue to reflect all those human experiences?”
At the Rubin Museum of Art, employees have started to ask similar questions of their own collection of Tibetan and Nepalese objects perfectly suited for the art of self-contemplation. For now, the museum plans to restart its meditation podcast and gear some of its learning programs to those affected by Covid-19 with pensive artworks like a 13th-century gilded statue of the Hindu goddess Durga or a 16th-century cloth painting of the Buddha meditating as demonic hordes assail him from below.
Taking another approach, the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio plans to train more than a hundred volunteer docents on art therapy techniques that will help them greet visitors when it reopens this summer.
That museums are taking art therapy more seriously than ever is due in large part to a program at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts that allows physicians to prescribe free access to its galleries. The museum was also one of the first in North America to hire a full-time art therapist in 2017.
Stephen Legari, who took the job, normally sees about 1,200 participants each year, but demands for his services have increased as Montreal — the epicenter of Canada’s coronavirus outbreak — reopens. “In quarantine, you’re looking at the same things in your apartment every day,” he explained. “The repetition is grinding down your capacity to concentrate. By contrast, museums are places for wonderment, beauty and awe.”
Katerine Caron joined the art therapy program about three years ago. For much of her life, the 52-year-old writer has dealt with neurological damage and severe trauma after being hit by a speeding car while walking her children across the street. She eagerly awaits Wednesday group sessions. “I hadn’t created art since I was a child,” Ms. Caron said, “but art therapy has helped me externalize what I’m feeling and express my gratitude for life.”
For her, the therapy has created a space outside the pandemic for her to process difficult emotions. “I’m less anxious and agitated,” she said, adding, “When I see the works of other artists, I know that I’m not alone.”
When sorting through the museum’s collection for inspiration recently, Mr. Legari has shied away from contemporary works. Instead, he is drawn to images of natural beauty rendered by the Romantics and Impressionists. He also likes to incorporate more abstract works by artists like Henri Matisse and Georges Braque into his sessions.
Looking at what Montreal has accomplished, Sally Tallant, executive director of the Queens Museum, hopes that her institution can replicate that same sense of refuge for people. In the meantime, the museum’s educators are testing out a variety of initiatives. There are weekly conversations with homebound seniors about the institution’s collection, a program for caregivers to learn about art, and several live-video artmaking sessions for recent immigrants who don’t speak English, which are also offered in Mandarin.
“This is a time to consider museums as places of care,” Ms. Tallant said. “There is a need to develop porous cultural institutions that are open, inclusive and empathetic as we recover from living through a prolonged period of isolation and loss.”
A version of this article appears in print on June 16, 2020, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Therapeutic Creative Expression.
Thursday, April 02, 2020
Guest Blog, Part 3: How Can We Reduce Violence?
Welcome to Part 3 of a guest blog post from Philip Whitelock, owner at RCMA.
He specializes in self-defense training, but also works on education
about preventing violence in the first place. Philip is doing a 3-part
special series for Adventures in Art Therapy, and I am thrilled to have
him be a guest blogger here!
In this video, Philip talks about helping people to intervene in reducing violence. One big part of violence prevention is loving people while not judging or isolating them. In general, we are great at responding to violence after it happens, but we can be much stronger at preventing violence to begin with. People need options and someone to offer these options to them. If you or someone you know is struggling with the urges to use violence as a form of expression, please contact us for more information.
Lacy Mucklow at Psychology Today
Thursday, March 26, 2020
Guest Blog, Part 2: How Does Art Therapy Help Manage Violence?
Welcome to Part 2 of a guest blog post from Philip Whitelock, owner at RCMA.
He specializes in self-defense training, but also works on education
about preventing violence in the first place. Philip is doing a 3-part
special series for Adventures in Art Therapy, and I am thrilled to have
him be a guest blogger here!
In this video, Philip talks about how oftentimes, people will start to display verbal and nonverbal precursors to violence before they end up lashing out in an extremely violent manner. So how does something like art therapy work in regards to managing violence? It can be a healthy outlet for the triggers and feelings that can lead to violent tendencies, which can help prevent violence from happening by allowing the individual to release negative feelings and to express themselves about these issues before they get to a boiling point.
Listen below for more...
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Guest Blog, Part 1: What Connection Do Art Therapy and Violence Have?
Welcome to Part 1 of a guest blog post from Philip Whitelock, owner at RCMA. He specializes in self-defense training, but also works on education about preventing violence in the first place. Philip is doing a 3-part special series for Adventures in Art Therapy, and I am thrilled to have him be a guest blogger here!
Here he talks about how violence is a form of expression, especially when people are having difficulty articulating emotions and feelings. When people act out with physical violence, there is almost always a "message" behind it. So if violence is a way of expressing oneself and making art is also another method of self-expression, can art replace violence in some situations? Can something like Art Therapy help prevent physical violence by allowing an outlet for people to communicate negative feelings and emotions in a healthier way?
Listen below for more....
Here he talks about how violence is a form of expression, especially when people are having difficulty articulating emotions and feelings. When people act out with physical violence, there is almost always a "message" behind it. So if violence is a way of expressing oneself and making art is also another method of self-expression, can art replace violence in some situations? Can something like Art Therapy help prevent physical violence by allowing an outlet for people to communicate negative feelings and emotions in a healthier way?
Listen below for more....
Thursday, January 30, 2020
Looking at Art Could Help Police Officers Pay Better Attention to Details
A while back, I posted about how art is being used to help doctors pay more attention to details for better diagnosis. (see https://arttherapist.blogspot.com/2018/12/looking-at-art-could-help-med-students.html)
Now they are using the same course to help police pay attention to details at crime scenes. Art can reveal a lot, and in this case, help people hone their skills on finding details that may be very important.
Looking at Art Helps Police Officers Pay Attention to Details
Jessie O’Brien
Dec 24, 2019 8:00am
A New York City detective was called to a crime scene in an industrial part of Brooklyn, New York, where he was told a female prostitute was found dead, rolled up in a rug. When the detective arrived, he noticed a small, unusual detail: The victim had matching well-manicured fingernails and toenails, an uncommon feature in the investigator’s experience with sex workers. The perfectly polished nails hinted that the Jane Doe was someone else. And she was: The woman turned out to be a missing criminal justice grad student. The detective’s eye for detail directed him toward the truth.
The incident with the Brooklyn investigator is a real example credited to art historian Amy Herman’s seminar The Art of Perception. The course utilizes fine art as a tool to test and strengthen perception skills and challenge inherent biases. Herman’s 2016 book Visual Intelligencealso employs art’s unique ability to nudge viewers to think about what’s in front of them. In the case with the detective, Herman recounted, “When he got to the crime scene, he said, ‘I remembered from your class: Look at the big picture, and look at the small details.’”
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Hieronymus Bosch
The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490-1500
Museo del Prado, Madrid
Famous works such as Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1490–1500)—with its absurd, unsettling creatures—are used as lessons in objectivity: Explain what’s there without emotion. Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) is an exercise in standing in someone else’s shoes: Look through the bartender’s eyes. What does she see?
Dulled perceptions can just as easily lead us to the wrong conclusions, without any awareness of our delusion. Herman, a former lawyer, was privy to malfunctioning human machinery in the courtroom; eyewitness testimonies are surprisingly inaccurate. With this in mind, she developed the course known as The Art of Perception while working in the education department at New York City’s Frick Collection in 2001. The program initially came about solely for medical students—a career where a wrong observation can mean life or death—but Herman knew her course applied to professions beyond medicine. “Medical students don’t have much peripheral vision,” she said. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845)must be suffering from IBS, and Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert (ca. 1476–78) is surely in the midst of a psychotic break.“They kept saying, ‘Who has cancer? Who has an illness?’” Herman recalled.
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
Édouard Manet
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1881-1882
The Courtauld Gallery, London
In 2004, Herman began cold-calling the New York Police Department (NYPD) about The Art of Perception, and today, she has taught the course well over 1,000 times—and she still teaches it at museums. Beyond the NYPD, her impressive list of clients includes U.S. Special Operations Forces, the U.S. Department of Defense, the FBI, Google, and more.
Credit Suisse’s investment banking division invites Herman back every year for its professional development program. “We’re moving so fast. It’s hard to not make assumptions,” said campus recruiter Rachael Schutzbank. After participating in seven of Herman’s courses, Schutzbank said what stuck with her is the importance of fighting those assumptions when communicating with others.
This is a lesson the police know too well. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) uses an image right out of Herman’s Visual Intelligence book to incorporate in their bias training. The image is of a white English bobby running behind a black man in plain clothes. Most people assume the black man is running from the bobby, when the truth is, he is a detective in everyday wear.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Countess d'Haussonville, 1845.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
“We put that right to use,” said Commander Daniel Godsel, a 28-year CPD veteran. After reading Visual Intelligence, he began a correspondence with Herman, who presented to the CPD in 2019. Godsel was especially drawn toward her methods because of his unlikely fine art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
“As I rose through the ranks, people would ask me, ‘Did the art background and training have an effect?’” he said. “There is something to that. By training in the art field, your brain tends to adapt and see things in a way people might not see.”
Godsel said that in the police academy, officers are trained in awareness discipline. They call it keeping your head on a pivot. Herman’s concepts in art take that training so much more in depth, he said. By the closing chapters of Visual Intelligence, Godsel was convinced every cop should read the book.
Earlier in Godsel’s career, he and his partner were called on a standard wellness check. It was a typical frigid winter in Chicago. When they arrived at a well-groomed brick bungalow, a young teenage girl appeared from the garage wearing socks and no jacket. She wasn’t willing to speak much to the officers before a young, clean-cut man came from the house. The man said he was watching his girlfriend’s little sister, and their stories lined up. He knew the girl’s name, age, her sister’s name, where the sister worked, phone numbers, and other details. Still, something didn’t seem right. “The answers were coming too quickly and too casually,” Godsel said.
And where was her jacket? Why was she in socks? Godsel and his partner requested that a female officer stop by the bungalow, knowing that sometimes female victims are uncomfortable speaking to male cops. As it turned out, the girl was abducted off the street, and the perpetrator had driven around with her to learn as much information as possible before sexually assaulting her.
Time Transfixed
René Magritte
Time Transfixed, 1938
Art Institute of Chicago
For Godsel, noticing the missing jacket represents a key takeaway from Herman’s course: What isn’t there is just as important as what is there. Herman uses René Magritte’s Time Transfixed (1938) as an example. In the course, she asks attendants to pair off. One person is asked to describe what’s in the painting, while another tries to draw what they hear. Many say there is a train coming from a fireplace and candles on a mantle. With this limited description, most would imagine candles in the sticks and a fire in the fireplace. To accurately describe the scene, however, it must be taken a step further to say the fireplace and candlesticks are empty.
According to the Visual Intelligence blog, the average museumgoer looks at a painting for 17 seconds before moving on. It’s impossible to absorb Time Transfixed without spending some time transfixed with it. A paradoxical realization from The Art of Perception is both how much we are not seeing and how much we are capable of seeing if we make the effort. Art books, museums, and galleries are worthy training grounds.
“In this disengaged world that we’re living in,” Herman said, “art from the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries still has the power to engage people to look more carefully.”
Jessie O’Brien
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