How Art Heals: Exploring Your Deep Feelings Using Collage

Access the healing power of art through guided meditation, collage prompts, and artist stories to connect to, and express, your deepest emotions. 

Use this compassionate guide to access your deepest emotions, express them through art, and transform them into tools for healing and understanding. Former psychotherapist turned artist Andy Stanton offers guided meditations, imagery techniques, and collage prompts to open a safe space for not only grief and brokenheartedness, but celebration and thankfulness.

First, follow relaxation and imagery techniques to access your feelings. Next, use the simple guidelines for making collage art. Inspiring us by example, dozens of contemporary artists offer photographs of their most personally transformative artworks and share heartfelt stories about how those pieces helped them alleviate their difficult emotions.

Focusing on the emotional-artistic process rather than specific skill, Stanton offers lessons for artists of all experience levels and mediums. An exclusive online bonus feature offers dozens more artworks and stories. 

Andra F. Stanton (Boulder, Colorado) is a retired psychotherapist and an artist whose main medium is textiles. She is the author of several books, including Dimensional Cloth: Sculpture by Contemporary Textile Artists (Schiffer).

Tien Chiu is an award-winning fiber artist and a professional project manager specializing in new product development. She uses both artisanal and industrial methods for creating original work. Christopher H. Amundsen is the Executive Director of the American Craft Council.