Process Drawing Sessions
What is Process Drawing?
Process drawing is an ongoing artistic project and creative healing experience that is the work of artist Emily Knighton. Emily uses large-scale, bilateral drawing motions on a floor canvas to intentionally engage her physical body within her process of emotional healing. While this is a private artistic practice, part of Emily’s vision for this project includes open studio sessions, inviting other women to participate and experience this process with her as a guide (by appointment only).
Open studio sessions are offered by appointment only. To be in the know about these opportunities, sign up for the newsletter below or send Emily a message.
What is an open studio session like?
Part of this ongoing artistic project is focusing on the beauty and complexity of the deep healing needed by women. At an open studio session, participants will be invited to join Emily in this project of creative healing by drawing alongside her. Sessions are held in a covered outdoor studio to engage the body with nature while working. The drawing motions are done with charcoal on a large canvas fabric on the floor. This process creates a space for participants to engage with deeper parts of themselves, potentially accessing emotions stored within the body, while also participating in a collective healing project. Only by engaging the body can we activate certain stages of emotional healing. While beautiful things are often made, it is not the focus of the session and creative experience is not required.
How is this helpful?
Throughout our lives we experience different types and levels of trauma. These traumas store in our physical body until they can move through and be released. To engage that type of healing, the body must be included within the healing process. There are many ways to engage the body in releasing stored traumas and pain - imagine feeling angry and then having the opportunity to connect bat to baseball and hit as hard as you can. Imagine feeling lethargic and stuck and then turning on your favorite song and dancing around the house. Imagine feeling scared or anxious and then shaking your entire body as hard as you can. Movement affects how we feel, how we relate to ourselves, to our emotions, to our environment, to our lives. Our body holds so much for us.
During Process Drawing, Emily is able to use large motions, which engages more of the body than a smaller table drawing. She uses both hands, a bilateral motion, to engage both sides of the brain. This helps the two sides talk with one another, which allows her awareness to sink to a deeper level than she may have had access to before. Like being able to think more clearly on a walk than sitting at a table, moving both sides of the body helps the brain connect which deepens awareness. Emily uses repetitive motions to create a meditative experience, and mostly draws with charcoal to engage a primitive felt sense as well as enact the wonder and magic that creativity uniquely offers.
All participant images are used with written permission.
Where did Emily get this idea?
‘When I was in college I discovered a (living) artist named Heather Hansen. Please look her up. She is a former dancer and a deeply impactful artist for me. In her series Emptied Gestures, Hansen used drawn line to do a recording of sorts of a floor routine as a form of performance art. As she danced, she drew. These performance drawings were mesmerizing. I watched her videos over and over and over. Often with tears in my eyes and a kind of excitement or adrenaline or something running through me.
I eventually gathered up the courage to try something similar, a large scale charcoal drawing on a spare piece of cloth I taped to the floor. With tears running down my face nearly the entire time I wondered what it was about this experience that affected me so much. After more practice, continued reading and research, I learned about the mind-body connection in healing from trauma, and the unique offerings that tapping into our creative selves through art therapy type practices hold for us. Fascinating.
I combined pieces of these ideas - Hansen’s stunning floor drawings, bilateral stimulation used for emotional healing, body engagement within this bilateral healing setting, therapeutic art processes and meditative motions - and I began to work on my drawings with the intention of creating a space of inner healing for myself. In 2023 I began opening my home studio space here and there, inviting others into this artistic project with me. Each time we begin I feel as though I am on sacred ground, sitting with one or more souls who have felt deep pain and are choosing the gift of healing for themselves, just as I am trying to do. A brave act. One I am honored to sit next to when given the opportunity. I hope to work on this project for years to come.’
-Emily Knighton, 2024
