Art is a pathway to Relational Empathy when worst trauma is sealing us down. Art is a bridge to life saving connectedness. Art, even coming along as imaginative art, is an act of living

 

 

Late in life I dream of a fellow prisoner in a concentration camp secretly passing over to me a drawing as a reminder that no matter what, we are not alone. Passing it over to a fellow, he risks his life

His picture shows his face on a piece of torn wrapping paper. It is created roughly with chalk crumbs (in the primary colors of yellow, red and blue). The picture is small enough to be carried under my cloth. It has been created just for this

Carrying it around at women's camp I feel less frightened. The man's self protrait is like a true friend encouraging me not to give up and stay alive

 

 

The scenery never happend to me in life

How come that my dream force puts me at a place like this with a stranger from the men's camp offering me a gift of love?

The scenery designed from my dream force is offering information on how to break free from trauma, and aesthetic trauma in my case

What do I mean by 'aesthetic trauma'?

Constant background feelings can speak of trauma very hard to grasp as no personal trauma event has happened. But the atmosphere of our surrounding can hold something we react to with trauma response because something has happened and it happend not to us

We humans are not only relational but also aesthetic animals. Our senses are an open system to all kinds of aesthetic environmental input, input of the current situation and input from across generations. These aesthetic inputs can hold trauma material we bodily respond to

 

 

I am sleeping in the family room (the couch is my bed for 16 years) looking up at a hudge oil painting in golden frame hanging at the wall. The picture is showing a dark landscape painted in wild strokes

Waking up at night I have to turn away from it. It is frightening. Waves of anxiety are flooding me. Comfort through caregivers is out of reach

My coping strategy is to let my eyes slide along the patterns of the persian carpet on the floor. Those patterns are real, colorful and repetitive. At the edge of the carpet they go on and on like an endless caravan, defining a rectangle. The rectangle of the carpet is serving as a holding container

The patterns are showing marks I decide to be little animals

The animal shapes are helpers. They allow to escape to a space of imagination that is friendly (they put me to a desert under the sun). Out there they are getting alive. They become living creatures carrying me on their backs

I follow the marks with my eyes as if painting them in detail. I do imaginative repetitive painting, re-experiencing lines and shapes. I am on escape road calming myself down with an imaginative brush on threads of indian yellow, red and blue

I am a young adult when my father reveals that the picture has not been purchased. The oil painting has been produced by one of the family hobby artists (there were two). It was the biggest painting of the family artwork and it differed in style

My greatuncle painted the picture shortly before he shot himself with a pistol. He had been a pharmacist and a respectable city council in Nazi German, painting for leisure. He was excluded from city council and decided to divorce from his wife to keep his pharmacy but was expropriated. About the same time his spouse was deported

Decades later I realize that my body has felt ancestry trauma as strong background feelings of horror. It has been implicit in the art aesthetics I was exposed to, invading the body

My body wisdom has served me wonderfully at that time. It has helped to find ressources in ornamentic arts bridging to the good

 

 

The dream illustrates ways to leave (aesthetic) trauma behind. The moment a person offers their art to fellows, life force is stepping in, even in desastrous circumstances. Connecting and dialoging with arts is life affirming

This engagement wants to be done with the artist-within-the-picture included. Connecting with the artist-within-the-picture makes him and me one people. This connection has healing power

Trauma healing is reconnecting to life through connnecting with at least one person of trust. When there is no person of trust around, the other person needed can be a person living behind a picture. Their presence comes through like the portrait of its maker

There sure is more in the dream than I can tell. In any case though there is a message of action: Life wants to be expressed. Creative expression wants to be shaped. Compassion wants to get shared

'Any action or interaction is a carrying forward of the body' (Eugene Gendlin, The Process Model)

The image of a man sharing his self-made portrait to keep one of his fellows alive is dwelling inside. It is a symbol of Relational Empathy and courageous empowerment. It is depicting the place where Creative Compassion comes from

To forward our own healing we draw small sized pastells, figurative and non figurative. The receptive-active art activities we practice are simple and colorful

The Fine Arts motives we resonate to are from Post-Impressionism, Expressionism and the Bauhaus Art. They speak of the Zeitgeist of the German Weimar Republic and the mastery of the pioneers of modern art

Expressing artistically what is resonating deep inside is satisfying. It offers a sense of belonging that can stretch beyond time spaces