Who: SJ
What: Acrylics
My name is SJ and I paint to as a means of emotional expression and to support my mental health. I have always doodled, sketched and journelled, but I would say in the last year and a half painting has saved me. When my mind is noisy and full of negative thoughts and traumatic memories I find it hard to talk about them with people close to me. Sometimes you just do not have the words but I can put the feelings into paint. I paint mostly with acrylics and when I’m overwhelmed it helps to make things external. Certain colours will represent certain feelings at that time or it may be an image of something I need to express. I also paint to calm my thoughts and try and create a bit of space from the noise in my mind. Its very cathartic and therapeutic to just let loose on the canvas or paper and get it all out…the painful and difficult emotions, the things you can’t put into words and the things too dark to express out loud. I often take my pictures to therapy and they help to talk about things I find hard to approach. My mood will dictate the direction of my art but I think that is good because I am expressing things instead of keeping them bottled up eating away at my insides.
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