Ugly Art - Why Parents Should Be Making It

Have a lot going on? More than a little overwhelmed? Finding yourself getting irritated with your kids?

Here's my solution:

Make Ugly Art!



Resources I mention during this episode:

The Recreative Online Art Group (formerly known as the Play with Purpose group)

Ugly Art Time lapse

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to Recreate Parenting, the podcast from licensed therapist and author Roya Dedeaux. We're going to talk about creative tools for more connection so that you can release fear and find joy and all of the places your kids take. This podcast is especially wonderful for those of you feel like your families don't quite get to mold

So just a little backstory here. I've got three kids under the age of 10. I run my own business, and that business takes a lot of my time. I have a private practice with a bunch of clients every week. I'm an author. I speak on podcasts I write I do all my own marketing, my social media, my bookkeeping, all of the things, not to mention, I homeschool and my kids are very, very social and involved in a lot of things. I have a house I'm trying to maintain a social life, my own family, friends, all this kind of stuff, you know, clean laundry every once in a while is good.

At the time I'm recording this I also have a 10 week old puppy, a cat, a bearded dragon or tortoise. You know we have assorted animals and science projects and Girl Scouts in basketball and karate. And all sorts of things. So not to make your like, you know, heart rate go up or your blood pressure increase. But I just want to give a little bit of a picture of the fact that I have a lot of stuff going on. Most of it's lovely. Most of it is stuff that I have worked really hard to be able to have in my life.

And I certainly frequently get overwhelmed.

I frequently have the feeling of things you're supposed to be away. And if I could just work harder, I can make it be that way or I can make it better.

I also know that those two feelings are a huge barrier to my connecting with my kids and enjoying the life that I have created for myself.

So when I start to feel overwhelmed, like it's just back to back appointments or back to back drudgery of you know, household maintenance. When I find myself picking up, you know, the blueberries that have spilled on the floor for the 50th time that day thinking to myself, I have a master's degree, I have a master's degree I have a master's degree or when I find that I am getting irritable with my kids or my husband and I know they really don't deserve it. But I just have this like crankiness that is in me waiting to get out in some way. That's what I know I need to make ugly art.

Making ugly art is one of my favorite tools for creative parenting. I think it does so many wonderful things for our brains. I think it's an important thing to practice on a regular basis. And in this episode, I want to talk to you really specifically about what it is how to do it, and why to do it.

So ugly art is exactly what it sounds like. It's making something almost on purpose to not look good. The idea is to just completely ignore what the end result will be. Not to think about technique or the right way. Or even that like this goes well with that. You don't want to be thinking about the product in any way, shape or form. You want to give yourself total permission and like try to make something ugly.

So for me what that often looks like because I always have watercolors handy is watercolor painting. It's just putting paint on the paper. It's putting together color combinations that I would not find beautiful unnecessarily. It's making squiggly lines. It's deciding suddenly to just like take a really dark color and paint over half of it. It's scraping away parts of it. It's maybe using my non-dominant hand. It's giving myself total permission to really experiment with whatever is on the paper.

Your ugly art could be collage it could be acrylics, it could be crayons, it could be whatever kind of medium you want to use. I just really happen to love watercolors and they are very handy and I have them accessible all the time.

So here's what I do. I start by just reminding myself that this is for the next 10 minutes or so going to be an exercise in making ugly art. I remind myself very actively that the end goal is just to spend time putting crap on paper and not thinking at all about the end result.

And then I start. If it's hard to get started, close your eyes.

Again, switch hands, paint with the paintbrush between your toes instead of your fingers. I mean there's all sorts of ways to just start getting marks on the paper because I make ugly art when I'm feeling overwhelmed. A lot of times the beginning is very dynamic. It's kind of a cathartic physical experience more than about the paint. It's jabs or slashes or that kind of you know, energetic stroke on the paper.

So I do that: I just keep doing that. And I try to pay attention not to how it looks but how it feels, or the movement of the water and the pigment on paper.

At some point, I can feel my breathing change. At some point it's almost like my hand and that paintbrush have a mind of its own. At some point. I'm just kind of following it. And that's when it turns into almost moving meditation, where again, it's still not about the end product, but the process is pulling something different out of net go until I'm out of time or I'm out of paper or I'm out of paint or the papers so soggy, it's ripping.

Usually by that time I can tell my breathing has changed and my posture is a little different. I'm noticing smaller details. It feels good.

It really does.

So I have five big benefits of making ugly art but that's really the first one. It just feels good. It feels really good. Part of what feels good. Is the first benefit. It's the permission, giving yourself permission to just do whatever. I mean, think about it-  when in the rest of your life do you really have that? When your kids really have that? I think you know this whole podcast is about how we can incorporate creativity and that kind of thing in with your parenting and making ugly art is a crucial piece for me. Because not only is it a good outlet and everything for myself, but it also reminds me that we need to be given permission sometimes to just exist. To not think about the outcome, to not think about, you know, how something looks, but just to be.

The movement meditation is a second huge benefit. I don't sit still well. I don't. I'm not a quiet inward kind of a person. A lot of the people I work with in my client base also have ADHD. We're not really like the sit still with our thoughts, population. And so doing this kind of artwork where the focus is on what's happening on the page and your breathing and everything adjusts as a result. It’s  as close to meditation as I'm ever going to get and it feels good and it has all the same benefits as other kinds of thought based meditation.

A third big benefit is that it aids our curiosity.

Since we're not going into these ugly art projects with an outcome in mind, it opens up our brain to be curious about what's going to happen next, to be curious about what happens if I put these two colors together. What happens if I smashed this color all over this other side of it? What happens if I erase this piece? What happens if I rip it up and start over? That what if what happens if that's a muscle that we get to exercise? And I think curiosity is one of the most important traits to foster in ourselves as parents and also in our kids.

The fourth benefit is that it allows us to turn off that inner editor voice. We all have it and it serves a function. We need an editor. We need to be able to think critically about things and to sort through big piles of stuff and you know, triage things and critique and all of that, like that's an important skill to have. But we have to be able to have moments where we turn it off.

And that brings me to the last benefit. Well not really the last one but the last one I'm going to say right now, which is that we all need time where there are no expectations of us and no pressure. We need it as parents because oh my goodness, there's a lot on our shoulders. And it's a good reminder that our kids need it too and this is one amazing way to actively spend some solid focused minutes where there is no pressure, no expectation of a final result, or an end product. And we just get to make ugly art and we get to wallow in it and be in the moment. In the experience with zero pressure.

When you do this, and you experience the like amazing relief that comes as a result of it. It's also a really stark contrast. And you kind of start to realize how much pressure you're experiencing in other parts of your life even if you weren't aware of it. So you need it. We need ugly art time. We really really do.

I put a time lapse video of some of my more recent ugly art making up on my Instagram and other social media and so if you make some ugly art, let me know I don't need to see the end product because again, that's not the point of it, but I would love to hear what you got out of that experience.

So go for it. Go make some ugly art

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Recreate Parenting Podcast. As always, I want to invite you to set aside and honor some time for creativity every single week by joining the Play with Purpose monthly membership. You can find information about that and everything else has to offer for you creative parents at Royadedeaux.com