Developing a Sense of Achievement
According to the participants, developmental progression, expressed in the theme “I strive to develop and gain a sense of achievement through art,” involved constant refinement and input from others. Paul, Sean, James, Lori, and Louise described certain benefits as a result of engaging in the conscious planning and preparation involved in the creative process. Such an intellectual practice required establishing their own ground rules before art production and using problem solving along the way. Conceptual thinking as well as physical restructuring of artistic elements in a piece was necessary to enable ideas to become fully realized. In their striving to express themselves, the participants noted being driven to see their achievements develop in an aesthetic form. Sean explained: “I guess sometimes it was hard to see where it was going. … But at every step we took a picture and I was able to show people what I was doing; so that was really exciting.”
Concentration was an important part of the participants’ art making as well as attentiveness to their symptoms. For example, Louise noted how she “persevered” through her symptomatic flashbacks. She used permanent ink (Figure 2), despite her awareness that it was an “unforgiving” material and was something she wanted to master in order to overcome her shaking hands. She explained: “My hands were doing something different [than] what my mind wanted.” She shared that she thought to herself, “you are going to have to do something” and decided that every time her hands shook she would make that shaking into something creative.