Issue: Art Therapy
Organization: Art Is The Cure
This week, our featured artist was inspired by the previous post, Julie Fordham. Julie passed Rich’s name along to me, and I’m tremendously excited to be featuring him and his organization, Art Is The Cure. Art Is The Cure helps people deal with pretty much any kind of problem imaginable as a positive release of pain and emotion through creative outlets.
Photo Credit: gobuttit photography
Rich had this to say about how he got started:
“I’ve always been into art and was the art geek in school. It came naturally to me that I would use art as a release and escape when I started going through problems in life. It became my cure without even realizing it. It wasn’t until I started telling people how I used art as a release and a cure that I realized how powerful art can be to someone.
I put my artwork on MySpace, as most artists do, and it started to attract attention from people. One girl in America emailed me one day asking about my work, so I told her my story; how it helped me deal with problems, what the paintings represented and how it made me feel. She replied a few days later telling me that she had been suicidal for months and used self harming as a release from the pain she was feeling. After hearing me tell her about using art as a form of therapy for myself, she went out and bought all manner or paints, brushes, pens, paper and spent a couple of days locked away experimenting with art as a release. She concluded the email by saying she didn’t think about self harming once in the last couple of days and that telling her about art as a cure saved her life.
This made a big impact on me and I thought, if I can do that for someone I’ve never met without even realizing it, imagine what I could do if I poured all of my energy and resources into this, and the movement Art Is The Cure was born. In the last year since the project began, it’s grown to help people all over the world and inspire thousands of people to deal with problems through art.”
Rich is based out of England and his own art is primarily rooted in street art, with stencil and spray paint (my own personal favorite). You can check out his pieces, along with more on his organization at his MySpace page, www.myspace.com/artisthecure.
I’d love to hear more from you readers about how art has been a release in your own life, and any other individuals or organizations you know working for similar causes. I’ve seen art as therapy exploding everywhere, and it’d be great to hear more. Be sure to write Rich, as well, if you’d like to tell him how art has helped you deal with issues you’ve faced.
