By Dwaine Watts
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Community Healing Through Visual Art
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June Arts and Healing Focus
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An art community is a place where people of all ethnicity, gender, ideology can express their artistic talents freely without repercussions. It is a place that provides a platform for freedom of expression in any art form. It inspires and nurtures the growth of one’s talents.
I began drawing in my early years growing up because I wanted to. I never thought of it as my true calling in life. There were things that I saw in the world around me that I thought were beautiful or caught my attention visually that I wanted for myself, and drawing those things was my way of making them mine.
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For most of my work, what inspired me was my desire to possess the things around me that I thought were beautiful to me. Whether it was an object that I couldn’t afford, a person who I found visually attractive, or someone else’s artwork. There was an artist by the name of Loïs Mailou Jones who was a big inspiration for a few of the drawings that I treasure dearly.
I came to learn about Loïs Mailou Jones in my early college days. I had to do an art project for class, and I couldn’t find anything I wanted to draw that interested me. It is challenging to draw anything if it doesn’t create a spark within me.
When I saw Ms. Jones’s work, it started more than just a spark, more like a giant flame. She inspired the artwork I created that took one night each to complete. I remember how much my body hurt from the long period of bending over the large paper I had propped up on a makeshift easel in my bedroom. I didn’t mind the pain at the time – I just wanted what she had created on a piece of paper so that I could have it for my own.
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When I went to the third piece, I realized I had to take a break to allow my body to recuperate. Unfortunately, the flame died when I tried to finish the third drawing. Over the years, I wanted to complete it, but the feeling was never the same.
I think art provides inner-healing because it allows one to escape the everyday stresses created in life. Whether you are a participant or a spectator of art, when you are fully immersed and unaware of the world around you, it gives you time to focus on the physical, mental and spiritual components of “SELF.” Art, in turn, creates inner-healing and a sense of well-being.
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