Art for Self-Care

“Art for Self-Care” by Jessica Swift is a transformative guide that harnesses the healing power of art. With personal anecdotes woven throughout, Swift outlines a three-stage process for self-care through art.
Readers will learn to embrace their emotions and thoughts without judgment. Swift encourages quiet reflection and provides prompts for expressing one's inner voice authentically.

Then she focuses on practical aspects of art-making, offering advice and techniques, inspiring readers to find their own sources of inspiration.

Then in the final stage, readers learn to accept healing and honor their truth. Swift guides readers in committing to an intuitive art practice that strengthens their relationship with their inner selves.

This book recognizes the therapeutic potential of art and presents it in a way that is accessible to everyone. Swift's writing style is warm, encouraging, and compassionate, making readers feel supported throughout their creative journey. The book is filled with inspiring examples, practical exercises, and beautiful illustrations, further enhancing the experience of self-discovery and healing through art.

I highly recommend “Art for Self-Care” as a valuable resource for anyone seeking a creative and meaningful way to process emotions and nurture their well-being. Through the power of art, Jessica Swift invites readers to change their lives one piece of art at a time, fostering a deeper connection with themselves and their inner world.

Art for Self-Care : Create Powerful, Healing Art by Listening to Your Inner Voice is a beautiful book for helping you to heal and manage your feelings through art. It is aimed at artists and non-artists alike, and focusses on enjoying and getting lost in the process. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout, and while the art might not be to everyone's taste, it is definitely inspiring.

I was so excited to start reading Jessica Swift’s new book and I wasn’t disappointed. This book is all about using art as a form of self care, more specifically by tuning into your intuition and inner self for guidance on how to cope with negative or difficult situations. This guidance is then interpreted and turned into a piece of artwork. Jessica is quick to point out that you absolutely don’t need to be an artist to use this book and I agree - it is the action of making marks on the paper that is therapeutic, not the look of the end result. However, the advice in this book is useful for artists too - being able to tune in to your intuition to discover inspiration will help you to create a much more unique piece of artwork that is infused with your style, rather than doing what many others do which is copy pictures from Unsplash or find inspiration on Pinterest, making their art look eerily like everyone else’s.

The book is split into three sections: ‘Going Inward’ teaches us how to listen to our intuition and gives guidance on interpreting the messages we hear. This part ends with a useful prompts section to help us to get started. ‘Insides Outward’ is where Jessica shows us the different techniques we can use to make our art, covering everything from mixed media, pencil crayons, digital art and different types of paint. She also covers different surfaces and finding inspiration. In ‘Integrating and Honouring’ we are advised on how to set up an art practise, how to keep going, to trust ourselves and our intuition and, most crucially, what to do with out artwork once we have finished it!

Jessica writes with a friendly, encouraging voice and weaves her personal story throughout the book. Her writing is easy to read, uplifting and enjoyable and I really enjoyed my time with this book. I would recommend it to anyone who creates art already or who would like to but thinks they can’t draw. This is different to any other art book I have read and is a very valuable addition to anyone’s collection because it covers dealing with universal issues and emotions through the very accessible medium of art. Highly recommended.

With thanks to Netgalley and Quarry Books for this advanced reader copy. All opinions are my own.

Jessica Swift's book, Art for Self-Care, is a beautiful book filled with inspiring art. I loved the explanation of the mediums that can be used for art and how to apply them for self-care. I also loved the prompts for art. Sometimes I want to use art to help me manage my feeling, but I don't know where to start, This book provided a road to wellness through art prompts and a plethora of ideas of mediums to use for art self-care. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in exploring art as a means to manage one's emotions.

Art for Self-care by Jessica Swift

This absolutely amazing book is everything you need to begin a journey inwards through art. As an artist and art teacher who has moved into the world of intuitive art I feel uniquely situated to highlight how special this book is.

Introduction: The introduction to this book, including Jessica’s story, gives us a real understanding of why connecting to our inner voice is deeply important. In sharing her story with such raw vulnerability, I was inspired to actually start finding this time for myself, rather only than thinking about doing it. (As a parent this is a common thought!)

Going inward:
This part of the book supports us to understand what our inner voice is and offers tips to make connecting to it easier making this book more than an art therapy book. It is a gift to ourselves where we start to see art as simply the vehicle to move us towards our inner world. This takes the pressure off the creation part of the process and opens us to the experience. The author covers all we need (in great detail) to feel like we can confidently get started connecting immediately.

I particularly liked the prompts with examples of artworks that she has created from those prompts as it gives a solid place to start.

Insides outward: This part of the book offers such a wonderful exploration of the creation process. There are examples of artworks, support to lean into your own artistic expression, suggested techniques and supplies discussed and artistic process to try.

Integrating and honouring: In this section the journey comes to a well supported conclusion, where the author encourages a journaling approach to the experience with ideas, prompts, and examples. As she talks us through this part of the process we realise that it sparks new thoughts and opens us to more artistic experiences which guide us inwards again.

I will be purchasing this book for myself and to use with my children and keeping it in mind for gifts in the future too. I hope that this book reaches many people as it has the potential to have a huge impact.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC of this book, all thoughts are my own and are given voluntarily.

The subtitle of this book gives readers a perfect sense of the author’s goals. She believes that art can be used as a form of self-care, self knowledge and healing.

Ms. Swift begins by sharing her own story which included a tragedy. She then discusses who might benefit from spending time with this title (most of us). In the pages that follow, readers are invited to work in three areas. These include going inward, considering insides outward, and finally integrating and honoring. She explains how to approach each area.

This is a lovely book. There were so many wonderful examples of Swift’s own artwork. Kudos to this warm and insightful artist for opening up her world to readers and encouraging their art and ability to hear an inner voice.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for this title. All opinions are my own.