Day 159: Art as Healing

Why making art can be an act of self-repair, not just self-expression

“I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.”
— Frida Kahlo

We often hear the phrase “self-expression,” but we rarely consider what that truly entails. To express something is not simply to say it out loud. It is to give it shape. It is to take something deeply internal, chaotic, buried, or undefined and translate it into a communicable form. Art is not just a release. It is a form of construction. A structure we build to hold the weight of our experience.

When artists create from a place of personal truth, they engage in a kind of translation. They turn raw emotion into symbol, movement, sound, image, or language. This transformation does not erase the pain or dilute the message. Instead, it renders the internal visible, and in doing so, allows it to be shared.

For the maker, art becomes a ritual of understanding. It offers the chance to reframe what was once unspeakable. For the witness, art offers resonance. It mirrors feelings that may not have had form before. It softens isolation. It reminds us that our experiences are not only ours to bear.

Art heals in two directions. It mends the one who shapes it. And it changes the one who sees it.

In this post, we explore the healing power of art through three artists: a painter, a photographer, and a writer. Each one shaped their truth into a creative form. Each one, in turn, offered others a path toward their own healing.

Frida Kahlo – Painting Pain into Power

Frida Kahlo’s paintings are not beautiful in the traditional sense. They are confrontational, symbolic, and filled with contradiction. Her work does not aim to please. It aims to reveal.

At age 18, Kahlo was in a devastating bus accident that fractured her spine and pelvis. Confined to bed and encased in a body cast, she began to paint using a custom easel that allowed her to work from a reclined position. A mirror was mounted above her, making herself both subject and observer.

Her paintings became her diary. Not a chronological one, but a visual journal of internal states. She painted her physical pain, her emotional betrayals, her cultural identity, and her infertility. Her images were rich in symbolism: monkeys, thorns, fetuses, roots, and surgical instruments filled her canvases with haunting clarity.

In The Broken Column, Kahlo presents herself with her torso split open, revealing a crumbling support in place of her spine. Her face is expressionless, yet tears streak her cheeks. In Henry Ford Hospital, she depicts her miscarriage in brutal detail, surrounded by floating objects tethered to her by umbilical-like cords.

These works were not intended for comfort. They were acts of declaration. She refused to be silenced, and she refused to make her pain palatable. She turned suffering into sovereignty.

For those who encounter her work, especially women or those living with chronic illness or trauma, Kahlo’s art becomes more than a visual experience. It becomes a mirror. A validation. A place where pain is not minimized but honored.

Frida Kahlo showed that art does not need to be perfect to be profound. It only needs to be true.

Gordon Parks – Photography as Justice and Dignity

Gordon Parks believed that art could be used to fight injustice. Born in 1912 in segregated Kansas, Parks experienced firsthand the realities of racism, poverty, and systemic limitation. He purchased a used camera at age 25 and began teaching himself photography. That camera became his tool for survival, protest, and storytelling.

Parks rose to prominence as the first Black staff photographer for Life Magazine, and his assignments often centered on Black life in America. But he did not seek to shock or exoticize. He sought to humanize. His photos portrayed the quiet dignity of everyday people; mothers cooking, children playing, workers commuting. He captured both struggle and grace.

In his iconic image American Gothic, Parks reimagined Grant Wood’s painting using Ella Watson, a Black cleaning woman, standing before the American flag with a mop and broom. It was a bold commentary on the hypocrisy of American ideals. It was also a tribute to a woman who had been overlooked by history.

Parks did not document suffering for spectacle. He framed his subjects with care, respect, and complexity. His photography helped white audiences see Black lives with empathy, not pity. His work became part of the civil rights movement’s visual language.

For those who saw themselves in his images, his work was affirming. For those who had ignored or misunderstood Black experience, his images were a challenge.

Art, in Parks’ hands, became a form of advocacy. But more than that, it became a form of healing; both for those who had been unseen and for those learning how to see.

Michaela Coel – Writing the Wound, Redefining Consent

When Michaela Coel released I May Destroy You in 2020, she created more than a television show. She created a reckoning. The series, drawn from her real-life experience of being drugged and sexually assaulted during the making of her previous show, is raw, nonlinear, and emotionally complex.

Coel could have chosen silence. Instead, she wrote. And revised. And wrote again. She turned the ambiguity, confusion, rage, and vulnerability of her trauma into a narrative that refused closure. The series includes surreal moments, multiple timelines, and characters who evolve in messy, human ways.

She also refused to cede ownership of her story. When major platforms demanded creative control, she walked away. She insisted on autonomy. Her story, her voice, her terms.

The result was groundbreaking. Viewers around the world, especially survivors, recognized their own stories in hers. Therapists recommended the show. Discussion groups formed. Survivors wrote letters thanking her for giving voice to what they had never been able to name.

What made I May Destroy You powerful was not just its content, but its form. Coel used structure to communicate emotional reality. Trauma, she showed, is not linear. Healing is not clean. And storytelling is not always about answers. Sometimes, it is about holding space for the complexity.

Michaela Coel showed that writing the wound does not mean glorifying pain. It means refusing to let it go unnamed. And in doing so, she created a work that healed not only herself, but a community.

The Witness Heals Too

Art does not exist for the artist alone. Its full power emerges when someone else sees it, hears it, feels it, or is changed by it. In this way, the act of witnessing becomes its own form of healing.

When we engage with art, especially work that expresses emotion or truth, our brains respond. The mirror neuron system activates. We begin to internalize the experience of the artist. We feel their joy, their sorrow, their resistance. And in doing so, we create connection.

This is not theoretical. Studies in psychology and neuroscience confirm that aesthetic experiences can reduce stress, enhance empathy, and increase feelings of belonging. People who regularly engage with art report higher emotional resilience and improved well-being.

But the transformation is also deeply personal. A painting might make you cry because it echoes something unspoken. A poem might stay with you for years, surfacing just when you need it. A film might help you understand someone you once judged.

Art is not a passive experience. It is a dialogue. And when truth is present, healing is possible on both sides.

Practice Prompt: Shape What You Carry

Today’s invitation is simple: make something from your truth.

You don’t need to call yourself an artist. You don’t need expensive materials or a grand plan. You only need to begin.

Choose a moment that shaped you. It might be joyful, sorrowful, confusing, or tender. Close your eyes and ask:

• What color would it be?

• What shape or sound does it have?

• What texture lives in the memory?

Now give it form.

• Scribble it in ink or pencil.

• Whisper it into your phone as a voice memo.

• Dance it out behind a closed door.

• Create a collage using found objects or images.

• Write a sentence that captures the feeling without explaining it.

You are not making art to impress. You are making it to express. You are giving structure to something that once had none. That is the work of healing.

Closing Thought and Call to Action

Art heals twice. Once when it is made. Again when it is witnessed.

If something in this reflection resonated with you, share it. Send it to someone who might need a reminder that their expression matters. Post your response, reflection, or creation using the hashtag #LucivaraCreative or tag @Lucivara on Instagram to join a community of seekers and storytellers.

To receive more reflections like this one, visit Lucivara.com and subscribe. Each day offers a new invitation to live with clarity, courage, and truth.

© 2025 Lucivara. All rights reserved.