Final - An Art Session with Friend

I was feeling a bit stressful when I heard the assignment since it’s hard for me to find someone to spend 30-45 minutes with me for a session. My clients from my placement are not suitable for the session (I am working in the ACT team and I need to go to the clients’ place, their rooms are too small for them to draw.) So at last I asked one of my friend, Z and she readily promised to help.

Z is a second year graduate student of NYU Wagner, she has been stayed in US for four years. She is recently struggled in the relationship with B, a man she loves. She met B in one of the elective class she attended in summer, and they began dating. B hinted a lots of times wanting Z to be his girl friend, but Z just ignored it. But a month ago, Z find herself began to like B, so she expressed the idea that want to be together with B but B rejected, which made her feeling sad recently. Also, as the final approaches, she feels anxious as well as depressed.

Z hang up with me last week and told me about her whole story with B as well as the pressure on finals and graduation. After hearing her story, I feel that she is the suitable person to do the therapy so I asked her whether she wanted to and she readily agreed. So I set up a time with her and met with her at the school library. I booked a room in advance as my session room and brought the oil pastels, color pencils, water colors papers, brushes for supplements.

Z showed up in the “session room” as scheduled time and she told me that she was already looking forward to the art session. She told me that she was really overwhelmed and hoped the session would help her. After she sat down, I first asked her to draw an animal character. I was thinking of doing the same session we did in class: create the animal character first and then make up a story. She chose to use the oil pastels and began to brainstorm. She asked me whether she could look up the pictures on the Internet since she is not good at drawing and I agreed to. She started to look up rabbit pictures online and tried to copy the picture. But she failed to do that since she didn’t like the piece she created. She asked me to change the object so I then asked her to draw the feeling she was in right now. She took 15 minutes to finish it. And she said that she is satisfied with this piece.

The picture she created was a landscape. She stuck to use the oil pastels. She drew the dark clouds which were raining at first and then created the mountains. She was chatting with me when she was creating the piece. She was talking about the things happened around her recently. After she told me some good things happened on her, she said that “I am gonna to draw a rainbow in here.” And she started to create the rainbow.

After the piece being finished, I asked Z what she would like to express in the whole piece. Z told me that she feels like all the things she is now going through is like the dark clouds which were raining. And the mountains are the metaphor of herself. She would be stronger after the storm. And the rainbow in the piece is representing hope. I asked her how did she feel after drawing and she told me she feels relieve after finish drawing since she feels she expressed herself during the process of drawing.

I appreciate her for sharing the feeling with me. Although we were friends, but sometimes some bad feelings are hard to express. This art session helped me to a different side of her and I think it’s a good way for her to express and venture her feelings.