Art in the Times of Coronavirus and Post-traumatic Growth.

You can download a printable PDF : here.

Post Traumatic Growth_Colouring.jpg

It’s been a strange year, this 2020. I don’t need to say this again as the planet seems to have sent us all, collectively, into our rooms to think about what we have done. One good thing about the changes we have all had to make, has been the need to slow down. We’ve had to stay in and have time to reassess our needs and priorities, and take stock of our lives. I, for one, have luckily been busy with work still, while trying to carve out time for art - as is the hustling artist’s life. But I also feel like I have been here before. While in quarantine, I decided to revisit this piece I produced some time after the death of my father. Much like these times, however voluntarily, I went into isolation and took the time to feel my feelings and process my grief, while still holding it together enough to conduct the purely practical aspects of my file. To the endless list of query’s to google to solve my life conundrums, I then added suicide bereavement and coping mechanisms. This is how I learned of the term Post-traumatic Growth fairly early into the process and decided this is what I was going to try to do: come out better on the other side. The operative verb in that sentence was definitely try. Hopefully, this is what we all decide to do now.

Also during those times, I listened to Isabel Allende explain how she has overcome things in her life like loss, exíle, separation and death with her writing:

“The way we tell our lives is the way we see our lives. And I don’t tell [about] exile, and death and all that in a bad tone. It’s an experience, and I am glad I lived it. I’m glad I was there with my daughter when she died, and I carry that in my heart like a treasure. And all that grief is like a sediment in my heart. And all the best stuff grows in that very fertile soil.”

This is the inspiration for this piece - using your downs as impulse to go up, like riding a bike along a hilly road; like those trees that grow even stronger and more beautiful because they grow on top of other dead trees.

And today, inspired as well by those artists I follow who have shared a little bit of their work, for free, with others in the middle of these difficult times, I want to share this with you. Please feel free to print it, share it and collaborate with me, adding some color to this piece!

You can download a printable PDF : here.

Also, feel free to share some photos of your work with me to any of my social media sites.