Each of us carries a wide emotional range embedded in our personal story. Joy, grief, fear, curiosity, longing…none of it exists in isolation. The question isn’t whether this range exists, but what we choose to do with it once we begin to notice it.
Art gives us options and opportunities to move in our story to ultimately create meaning.
Sometimes, we create art as a form of escape. We paint, draw, write, or make simply to avoid feeling what’s too heavy in the moment. There’s a common belief that this is somehow “wrong” or less authentic…but I don’t think that’s true. Escape has a function. It offers relief. It gives our nervous system a break. It allows us to breathe when direct contact with an emotion feels overwhelming. In narrative terms, this is the pause in the story, the place where the character retreats before re-engaging.
Other times, we create art to engage. This is when we allow ourselves to feel through the emotion instead of around it. The art becomes a container, a place where sadness, anger, confusion, or fear can exist without needing to be explained or justified. In this space, the body often leads before the mind catches up. We are no longer avoiding the story; we are inside it.
And then there are moments when we create art to make meaning. This is where narrative theory becomes especially powerful. Narrative theory reminds us that humans understand their lives through story, not as a list of events, but as a lived experience shaped by interpretation. When we return to our art after engaging emotionally, we can begin to ask: What does this mean for me? How does this moment fit into my larger story? Art helps us reorganize experience into something we can hold, understand, and integrate.
What’s important to remember is this: these stages are not linear.
We don’t escape once, then engage, then make meaning and never return. We move back and forth constantly. One day we might paint purely to distract ourselves. The next day, the same image might unlock something deeper. Another day, we may reflect on it and realize it connects to a much older part of our story.
This movement is not a failure of the process, but it is the process.
When we work with our story through art, we’re not trying to force healing or insight. We’re allowing space for the full range of our internal reality to exist. Art becomes both a refuge and a mirror. A place to rest, a place to feel, and a place to understand.
The power isn’t in choosing the “right” reason to create; it’s in letting art meet us exactly where we are in the story and trusting that meaning will emerge when it’s ready.
WAVES OF EXPRESSION 
What did you think of this idea??