Page 45 - ART FORM AND MENTAL HEALTH - Ingrid Pénzes

the degree of physical contact, the amount of control these properties can provide and the scope of technical possibilities. This characterization is consistent with the conceptualization of art materials in the ETC (Hinz, 2009; Lusebrink, 1990, 2010; Kagin & Lusebrink, 1978) in which the intrinsic structure and qualities, in combination with task complexity and tasks structure, are related to more affective or cognitive experiences. Other authors also characterize art materials as having a more fluid or resistive nature (Malchiodi, 2012; Hyland Moon, 2010) and relate these properties to the amount of provided control and evoking affective responses (Malchiodi, 2002; Schnetz, 2005; Virshup, Riley & Sheperd, 1993).
Art therapists applied the properties of art materials in art therapy assessment to observe a client’s material interaction and observe sequentially:
• The amount of structure the client needed to create art (offering a
structured context with familiar or preferred materials, using mostly
2D graphic materials with much of intrinsic structure).
• The characteristic patterns in the client’s material interaction and material experience (allowing the client choose the art materials or
offering multi faceted art materials).
• The client’s flexibility to explore different styles of material interaction
(offering art materials with opposite properties to evoke material interaction in opposition to the client’s familiar material interaction).
The ETC emphasizes the client’s free choice of art materials to assess a client’s preferred or non-preferred level of information processing, but the abovementioned three-staged assessment further theorized on the use of art material properties in several stages of art therapy assessment. The ETC also relates resistive materials to more cognitive experiences and fluid materials to more affective experiences. This relationship confirms the findings of this study.
Art therapists primarily used painting and drawing materials during these assessment stages. This use confirms the statement of Moon Hyland (2010) that these are still preferred in current art therapy practice, even though she herself advocates a broader use of “art” in art therapy based on trends and developments in a wider sociocultural context. Knowledge of the properties of the art materials allowed the art therapists to systematically apply these properties to meet the goals of art therapy assessment. This profound knowledge also enabled therapists to give meaning to the
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