I recount this memory because it evokes strong feelings in me. It seems significant that this was such a vivid experience although it happened well before I began to make an emotional investment in the idea of drawing, and subsequently began to consider my self a visual artist. I was three, or perhaps, four years old at the time and this was a fundamental experience of an activity that, for me, has since acquired complex layers of meaning, which have become difficult to unravel. It seems an appropriate starting point for an article in which I aim to clarify my understanding of some of the most important processes that are at work in art therapy sessions. An initial scan for relevant literature revealed that although there has been much written by art historians, interpreters and observers of art, there is far less material that describes the creative process from the point of view of the person making the work. If this is the case for art in general, it is even
more evident when the subject of research is the experience and the processes involved in drawing. However it seems that in the last few years drawing has been increasingly championed as an important creative process, but has also gained status as an analogy, which is useful in understanding some aspects of contemporary consciousness. Barbara Stafford’s ideas about the usefulness of analogy, as a radical means of understanding human experience, support the idea that by examining the activity of drawing, it may be possible to gain insight into other elements of human existence. Her radical theory springs from the rising discontent of twentieth century intellectuals with the perceived split between intuition and intellect, to acknowledge that, whether we are conscious of it or not, human experience and thought involves our whole being and that life is a creative condition (Stafford 2001). If we agree with her view of the human condition, we can see why drawing, as a creative act, may be a fruitful analogy. There have recently been some interesting contributions by several contemporary artists on the subject of their own practice of drawing and I look first at some of these. Contemporary art reflects the experience of individual members of society and, at the same time, is an accurate barometer of the current sensibility and state of society. It is important for art therapists to remain involved with cultural activity since society influences and to some extent shapes issues that arise in therapy (Sass 1992). Having gathered some contemporary ideas about the nature of drawing I turn my attention to the writing of creative arts therapist Arthur Robbins and the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to investigate the nature of self and consciousness and how this relates to drawing. I look at the art of the San People of the Kalahari Desert in order to gain a sense of the important position that drawing has occupied from the earliest hunter-gatherer societies to the present day, and I make links between what is understood of the purpose of these images and the universal characteristics of drawing. An exploration of Rita Simon’s categorization of styles in drawing and painting lead me to ask questions about the role of sensory experience in creativity and the physical and psychological mechanisms that involve the unconscious. There has been a substantial amount written about the developmental aspects of children’s drawing and although this is important and underpins much of the literature, on which I base my ideas, I do not refer to it directly. Psychoanalysts have frequently turned their attention to the subject of creativity and I refer to