The Importance of Creating with No Expectation: The Role of Art Therapy Today

My first proper experience with art and creation was during secondary school, where I chose art as a subject. This, as many others can attest to, was a form of creativity associated with incredibly high expectations (and a lot of crying during class). I finished the required two years to get my GCSE, and vowed to never touch a paintbrush again. Painting had quickly become defined by strictly academic conventions and constraints that I decided in no world could bring any solace or joy.

This was a promise I kept to firmly for years, until this summer when I volunteered in a local art therapy organisation. It was there, in conversations with individuals living with dementia and those with additional support needs, that I noticed how wonderful art becomes when you stop expecting a certain outcome. Although there was such a varied range of people attending the sessions, the core of the mission stayed consistent. Art was there as an outlet, a kind of therapy that often allowed them to express what they couldn’t quite put into words. At times it reminded me of how my kindergarten children or my au pair kids created art, with an abandon and spontaneity that I hadn’t encountered for a long time. The pieces that resulted were completely wonderful, expressive, and genuine.

One memory that particularly sticks out to me is a non-verbal man who came regularly and created amazing, politically charged work. Without thinking for a second, he would lay down thick black lines, draw caricatures, and collage headlines together.

I recently moved to Vienna for the year and, despite absolutely loving my new job and surroundings now, it took me a while to feel fully grounded and integrated. I started doing a watercolour a day, inspired by the wonderful art and freedom in expression I had encountered over the summer. It started as something small and helped me romanticise even the boring days (I have a watercolour of our flooded kitchen and exploded plugs on day four). Now (and hopefully without sounding too overly dramatic), this daily ritual has genuinely changed the way I move through my life; it has quietly reshaped my routine and my mindset.

Because I never held any expectations around my watercolours, it has become a really therapeutic routine. Human art, writing, literature, creativity, and history are SO incredibly important, and maybe small creative routines are a little act of rebellion amidst so much AI rubbish. I do hate to bring AI into this, but I genuinely have such a deep hatred for it and its terrifyingly rapid growth. I’m writing this on the tram to work and can see a girl in front of me on ChatGPT having a conversation (I’m very nosy, but actually, what are we doing?).

Hopefully we can all try and create something little every day, without the constraints of expectation and without chatting to AI first!