Art Therapy, how it helped me with flood recovery

I recently wrote a post on my socials about how I really didn’t understand art as therapy until recently. To catch you up, we got flooded, our gorgeous home that we renovated just 2 years ago was inundated in the floods that caused so much heartache across the Northern Rivers. As I have said to so many we are the lucky ones, firstly we are insured, we have wonderful friends who new of an empty house we could rent for as long as we need it, and lastly during the ordeal we were not frightened. We new that as soon as the tide changed the water would recede, I feel for those who had rising water with no idea of how far it would continue, that is frightening.

That was almost 3 months ago now, in some ways it has been slow and tedious but in others it has flown by. We have adapted to our new situation and as frustrating as it is life goes on. My art business has gone from thriving to struggling and adapting is the key word.

I have adapted to not painting every day to finally being able to move a little paint around on some paper in my adapted studio. This consists of my easel, and 2 trolleys that I can roll out of the garage and paint in the backyard, this is wonderful unless its windy!!! 

My time is also being spent on the business side of things, planning, learning and researching how to achieve what I dream to create on paper, canvas and for my business. Researching how other artists are doing things and trying to figure out how I can adapt these into my business. I feel like I am not doing anything I do have to remind myself that its not always about how much paint ends up on the canvas at the end of a day.

Spending time working on my business is just as therapeutic for me as working on a gorgeous canvas but there is nothing like the feeling of finally moving the paint around and getting messy, that’s what makes me truely happy. Whatever I am working on I am better if I am busy and not thinking about repairs, mould and insurance companies, because that’s not fun at all!

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and its how you adapt to this is what makes you a success, in business and in life!

Sahra xx