“I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art”. Yayoi Kusama (1929 – 2026)
For some decades it has been well observed that art therapy has proven to have the power to heal pain, help people through recovery from an illness, or restore if you will, an inner sense of being through the creation of art, painting, sculpture or crafts. And it has no age boundaries in terms of who benefits from the self expression. Even if you don’t think you have a natural artistic bent, art can be encouraged, guided or taught.
As a very prominent example of the power of art therapy at work through a long lifetime, one can look no further than the highly influential Yayoi Kusamawho died this August at age 97. Kusama had a life long experience with mental health, yet the multi-disciplined work she has left us with is larger than life, colourful, joyous. If you want to go to a superlative example there is Kusama’s world wide Infinity Mirror Rooms -one of which is in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. It was in 2019 that I stepped into this Infinity Mirror Room – Let’s Survive Forever when it first opened and magical may be only one word to describe that experience. If this is what ultimate art therapy can produce, then I can only imagine that there is no end to the possibilities of creating a sense of self in a search for wholeness as your older self, however that unfolds. I am reminded here of a motto from an artist and art teacher I know, Cailey Massey – “art is transcendent of age”.
