My name is Christy Wolfram and I am an artist and an art therapist.
I paint my feelings. My paintings explore and give vision to my thoughts and emotions.
I use mindful awareness of my emotional and physical feelings as the subject matter for my paintings. Checking in with my body and how I am feeling, I picture those feelings as colors and shapes and textures, and then paint them. I try to get still and quiet and turn my focus inward to how I am feeling within. Painting is cathartic for me, at times, getting the feelings out of myself and onto the surface. Other times I am just stuck in the feeling, repeatedly coming back to similar feelings and images over and over, especially anxious fear based feelings. I have tuned in to my anxiety and fear and continue to fight with it and simultaneously accept it, or ignore it.
I use oil paint and R&F Oil paint sticks to paint out my feelings. I also incorporate graphite, and charcoal to physically smear out my feelings. I like the tactile nature of painting with my hands to smear paint around. I focus on the process of connecting to my feelings and painting my feelings out. I want to express my feelings, share them with others. The process of painting out the feelings is personal, and then identifying the feelings verbalizing and sharing with others is very vulnerable. I hope to role model that this process is so helpful in managing feelings.
Painting is a release, it can be enjoyable, uplifting, releasing, freeing experience. Especially when I get lost in the flow of the moment. Painting can also be anxiety producing. (That is a minimizing statement.) Painting has also caused me great anxiety, especially the thought of sharing my paintings with others. I have been making art since I was a child. I never stopped. Most people stop making at in Junior high, when peer pressure and our own self critical voice is so strong. My parents signed me up for art classes on Saturdays at the local art college. And I keep drawing and painting and creating. Attending Ft Hayse art program during high school, and the Columbus COllege of Art and Design, CCAD, for my BFA I then focused on my art therapy career. I bought into the myth of the starving artist, and the thought that I needed to get a real job and a career because otherwise I would be a starving artist. However, I kept creating art, filling multiple art journals, and painting off and on, but not sharing with others.
I let my anxiety win I listened to the anxious voice of fear and bought into its’ lie. FEAR IS A LIAR!
In 2018 it finally clicked in my head that fear is a liar, that other people do make money and make a living with their art. That others do want to see and share their feelings through art. That my unique voice is important and worthy of being heard.
I have hit my 40’s and the part of me that has been wanting to paint and be a professional artist has realized that time is running out and I need to get my act together. The fear of not painting and regretting it has gotten stronger than the fear of painting and sharing it with the world.
AND I want to share my art and art process with you. I want you to know that you too can paint your feelings and share them, if you are afraid. I teach about anxiety and how to cope with it, work with it, ignore it. Feel it and do it anyway. Feel the fear and paint it anyway.
Books that have helped me:
- Fear and Other Uninvited Guests– Harriet Lerner
- Art and Fear– David Bayles and Ted Orland.
- The Gifts of Imperfection– Brene Brown.
- I Thought It Was Just Me– Brene Brown
- Daring Greatly– Brene Brown
- Rising Strong– Brene Brown
- Braving the Wilderness– Brene Brown
- You Are a Badass– Jen Sincero
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck– Mark Manson
- Get Your Shit Together– Sarah Knight
I received my BFA from The Columbus College of Art and Design. My Master’s of Clinical Art Therapy and Marriage and Family Therapy from Loyola Marymount University. I am a Licensed Professional Art Therapist, a Board Certified Art Therapist, and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. I have a painting studio in my home in Cincinnati Ohio.
CV
Christy Wolfram (b.1976, Columbus, OH)
christy_wolfram@mac.com | www.christywolfram.com
Education:
The Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus Ohio,
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Minor in Art Therapy 1999
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California
Master of Arts in Art Therapy 2001
Exhibitions:
2021 Abstract Feelings, The Pendleton Art Center, OH
2020 The Pendleton Art Center Studio 414, OH
2020 The Little Art Show Indian Hill Gallery
2020 The Northminster Fine Arts Show
Bibliography:
Stormy Feelings, Brush Magazine, Issue 2, 2018
Collections:
Private Collection, Detroit, MI
Private Collection, Columbus, OH
Private Collection, Cincinnati, OH