The Art of Knowing Yourself: A Spiritual Journey of Self-Discovery and Empowerment Through Art

By Yvonne Fuchs

Yvonne Fuchs shares her wisdom on personal development in this engaging and practical guide to personal creativity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447567561

Book preview

University

Introduction

My Story

If you had known me 25 years ago, you would not recognise me as the same person I am now. Wracked by self-doubt, I did not know who I was. My marriage was unhappy, I was struggling financially and was a veritable mess. The image I have of myself back then is of a poor little flower valiantly trying to survive in the midst of squalor!

Fast forward 25 years, and I now have an interesting career, a wonderful family, many supportive and loving relationships, a creative life and everything material that I need. In my own picture of happiness, I feel very successful. The decisions I make now are much more self-assured and confident; even if I agonise over them too much sometimes, I still feel empowered and can confidently say that I absolutely love living!

This does not mean that nothing bad happens or that everything in the garden is rosy, but rather that I can see things differently now, and am able to respond to the crises that naturally happen in life – I know I’m resourceful and can handle stuff. Although there’s much I still want to do, I am continually in awe of how much can be achieved if you focus on what you want and have the faith to believe you can do it.

So what happened to change me from a flower in the midst of squalor to a woman moving forward with equanimity and confidence through the present and into the future?

The answer, very simply, is that I spent the last 25 years coming to know myself, warts and all. Even back then, I knew in the core of my being that I did not want to experience life as it was - that I wanted and deserved something different. I wanted to be free, and felt the key was to get to know myself and what really makes me tick. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this would help me become much more confident, and so set out to change my life and get happy by becoming more grounded and being more myself.

The creative process is one of the most powerful ways to get past the superficial verbal mind and connect to the essential primal self, and is one of the most direct paths for re-discovering one's most fundamental sense of self and identity, something I had lost along the way. For me, art was and continues to be the path to this self-knowledge and self-understanding, and I can honestly say it has saved my life.

Although I had been to art school and loved making art, it wasn't enough. I had to merge the artistic knowledge with the development of my essential self - the playful child who was lost. I had to find my adult creative self. So how did I do this?

When I went to art school in the 70’s, most art education was a pick and mix of experimenting. I loved the freedom to try things out (many of those experiments are in this book) and decided to give myself permission to play. Later, when I had small children - as they did finger painting so did I - even helping at my local playgroup so I could really go for it!

An art teacher gave me a book of wonderful Post-Impressionist and Expressionist prints, which began a love affair with colour and light that continues to this day. Colour was almost entirely missing from my life at that time - all my clothes were black, my life seemed black, and my mood was certainly black. As I began to introduce colour into my clothes and surroundings, my mood began to lighten and become more varied and refined.

Things really began to shift for me when I engaged in art therapy sessions where I had the opportunity to let go with brushes, collages and all manner of materials and then talk about the work with my therapist afterwards. I was so helped by this that I later trained to be an art therapist myself.

I learned to explore my creative self and inner world through imaginative painting, creative experiments and journaling. Now I always have my notebook nearby, whether I’m travelling, attending a workshop, or just hanging out at home. For me it is an important way to record and explore ideas in the moment, to keep connected to whatever arises from my inner self, and of course to indulge my creative impulses and have fun.

Along the way I have realised the importance of continuing to learn different ways of engaging with the senses and new methods of working at one's art. There is always something new and exciting to learn. I use my current passions - gardening, travel and collecting interesting natural things - as inspiring and motivating 'channels' for continuing to learn and be challenged.

A few years ago I suffered an injury to my right hand and could not paint or draw for over seven years. For an artist this seemed a disaster, and I was devastated, but a friend encouraged me to find new ways to express myself. It was during this time of finding different forms of expression that I went back to all the various creative pastimes I’d had growing up, and experimented with sewing, cooking, flower arranging and so on.

As health returned to my hand, I decided to reconnect with the very simple elements of making art that you often encounter in primary school, such as collage, sponge painting and simple mark making. I realised that these simple ways of being creative were just as important as the more sophisticated things I’d learned as an art student, and that I could still retain my creativity by working in a simple and direct way.

I cannot stress enough that some of the most profound influences in my life have been the