Painting to heal with Jaylin Richardson
The local teacher sees art as a great many things, but most importantly, sees it as a tool to heal.
“There is no such thing as bad art, it is always an expression of who you are and what you are feeling.”
These are the words of local art teacher Jaylin Richardson, an artist who deeply believes that art has healing qualities.
Drawn to art all her life, as a little girl sitting in her art teacher’s classroom, she would find herself enchanted by the works of Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali’s painting, The Elephants. In her late teens, she visited a gallery and saw the works of South African artist, Penny Siopis, and there, inspired by the artist’s Retrospective Exhibition, she knew she wanted to be an artist and study art.
So she did just that, got her hands covered in paint so she could eventually say she has a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the University of Johannesburg. Her deep desire to have people enjoy and create their own art led to her becoming an art teacher – teaching teens and adults alike at the Fairland-based Lillian Gray Fine Art School.
For Richardson though, art goes beyond just being visually appealing. “I see it as something that heals people through the process of making it but also through looking at it. It evokes emotion and can transcend barriers like language as it is something that you can feel emotion through.”
She views art as a good way to go into a meditative state. As it finds, it takes away everything around you, and in some way, heals you. Richardson firmly believes in the healing properties art can have.
Though she has always thought art had healing properties, it was made evident to her through her adult students. Richardson gauged that following Covid-19, these students either wanted to give themselves the space to try something they had always wanted to do but never had the time, or use it as a tool of healing, following the loss of loved ones. The artist said the production of something you are proud of is also healing as it helps with self-esteem.
Creating art for her is a mixture of conceptualisation, planning and most significantly, intuition. “I think most people just intuitively know what to create and I have just always felt like I always knew what I want to paint.”
Though Richardson realises she cannot force people to feel a certain way by looking at her art, she hopes that when people do look at her art, pieces feel healed.
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