Creativity can heal and more...

Creating artwork can heal grief.

Creativity can heal and more...

In Olympia, Washington back in the '80's I met RP., a woman who'd recently lost her husband and was blinded with grief. RP. already made watercolor paintings and belonged to a snobbish community art club in which she had not a drop status.

RP's watercolors weren't enough to excise her pain. Since I had a sculpture studio just around the corner from her house, I invited her to join me and try her hand at making three dimensional artwork. She accepted the challenge. Some of her sculptures were difficult to engineer, others had complicated compositions and every one was far better than my expectations. With the act of sculpting she was chipping away at her debilitating grief and finding her power. By the time I moved from Olympia a couple years later, RP was already able to sell her work and later, I discovered, became the president of the community art club.

It's forty years later and I still have a clay studio to which I occasionally invite people to work. Not one of them has exhibited the skill and the personal strength of RP., who found a way to excavate herself out of the depths of despair. I'm proud for her. I'm lucky to have known her.