Why You Don’t Need To Be An Artist To Heal Through Creativity
Sometimes we limit ourselves before we even begin. “I’m not an artist” is a phrase I’ve heard, and said, more times than I can count. But here’s the truth: Being an artist simply means you create art. And healing through art doesn’t require talent, training, or even a love for drawing. What it does require is presence, curiosity, and the willingness to see what’s inside you.
Art can be a shortcut to clarity when words fail. It’s a way to notice what you’re feeling, process it, and release it, all without worrying if someone else would call it “good.” This is why therapeutic art works for people who are stressed, busy, or simply more visual thinkers or processed based over words. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words…” You can get a lot out of ten minutes with a brush or pastels, sometimes more than hours of journaling could give, especially on days when finding the right words feels impossible.
Creativity over talent
When I first started noticing the effects of this practice, it wasn’t because I was trying to make something beautiful. It was because I was overwhelmed, spinning in circles with my thoughts, and desperate for a way to calm my nervous system. I grabbed some oil pastels, made some marks, and didn’t think twice. My scribbles were messy, chaotic, high-contrast, and loud—but by the end of the session, my mood had shifted. I realized that in ten minutes of playing with paint, I could express more of what I was feeling than I ever could in words.
That’s the essence of therapeutic art. It isn’t about creating masterpieces. It’s about creating space for your emotions, noticing patterns, and reflecting on your inner world through movement, color, and texture. The marks you make, the layers you build, and even the “mistakes” you see are all data points about what’s happening inside you.
How Internal Landscapes makes it accessible
This is exactly what Internal Landscapes is built to do. Through guided, intuitive exercises, the course helps you explore your emotions visually, recognize your patterns, and connect with yourself in a meaningful way. You’ll learn to notice how different colors, textures, and shapes relate to your inner state, without worrying about skill, technique, or comparison. The course is structured, but it’s flexible—you move at your own pace, in your own way.
For example, you might start with a simple warm-up exercise that asks you to create marks reflecting your current energy. From there, you layer colors or explore shapes intuitively, noticing how the marks shift as your thoughts and feelings shift. It’s an exploration of your inner landscape, with practical reflection woven in - but it’s a conversation, not homework.
Seeing the proof in your own marks
One of the most powerful aspects of this approach is that you get immediate feedback from yourself. Over time, you begin to recognize the signs of stress, tension, or emotional blocks before they even reach your consciousness. You might notice, as I did, that certain patterns, like tight circles or jagged lines, show up when you’re stuck, while flowing, open marks signal calm or relief. This is your personal language, waiting for you to decode it, and it can transform how you relate to your own emotional landscape.
Internal Landscapes gives you that framework. It doesn’t tell you what to create, or what your marks mean—it gives you tools to notice, reflect, and understand your own patterns. And because it’s visual, intuitive, and flexible, it’s ideal for people who don’t want to—or can’t—spend time journaling in words.
If you’ve ever felt that words fall short, or that your emotions are spinning faster than you can catch them, this course is a practical, creative way to bridge that gap. It’s your space to explore, reflect, and express in a way that’s meaningful to you, without any pressure to produce something “perfect.” If you’d like to learn more, check out my therapeutic art course Internal Landscapes.
