OUTSIDE(R) ART: doing art outside is good for us, by Sonya Gracey, Art Therapy Practicum Candidate
Doing OUTSIDE art is good for us!
In June and July I will be offering some art therapy sessions outside! These sessions will be for folks who I have already had an first in-studio appointment with and we have decided this will be a good fit – so book-in with me and let’s chat!
**REMINDER**
For the summer, if you are already a Heart and Hands client then you get your FIRST SESSION with me for $30 (or less if that is not possible – more info on rates here)
I know outdoors is not an easy place for lots of folks – it can feel big and bright and overwhelming – so if this is not for you – that is A-OK! We can work in the studio together as outsiders with outside materials! And if you ever want to slowly start taking some of our time together outdoors we can do that, at your pace.
If Outside(r) Art sounds interesting to you and you want to know a bit more keep reading!
What is Outside Art?
So outsider art is any art made literally outdoors or in natural settings, or inside with outside nature materials
Also known as eco-art or nature-based therapy, doing art therapy outside brings all sorts of benefits and opportunities! When we work outside we will work with what is there – and we will work with a non-extractive ethical approach that centers respect, and care and reciprocity for and with the natural world (including ourselves!).
Being outside in general supports our nervous systems, increases mental clarity and emotional regulation, and offers a sense of connection—physiologically, psychologically, and spiritually. There is robust scientific evidence that simply looking at natural elements like trees, water, or green spaces (no matter how small!) can reduce physiological markers of stress, including blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol levels – so taking art therapy outside is like putting icing on the cake! Check out the book: The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams for all sorts of good info!
What is OUTSIDE Art Therapy?
It is taking the magic of Art Therapy OUTSIDE! It is so nice here in Coast Salish territories in June and July!!! When we work outside we will work with what is there – and we will work with a non-extractive reciprocal approach that centers respect and care for the natural world (including ourselves!) that also acknowledges that this is unceded, unsurrendered Indigenous lands.
We just need to find a shady spot, with some water (and access to bathrooms) and boom: perfect art therapy studio! No other supplies needed! The land offers so so much – it makes me giddy – twigs, rocks, leaves, moss, grasses, flowers as well as other found items (like shiny trash!)! Using our senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and maybe even taste to relate, listen and learn with our kin. Possibly create a collage, sculpture of mandala, capture some photographs or work with poetry or song? We will see what arises – and I will be there to support integration and processing!
Here is what an outside session will look like:
- begin just with a check in about how and where we are arriving; connecting to the place where we are and each other,
- look / sense around and be with the surroundings to see what calls or offers itself to us;
- explore, and figure out (together with the land) what (if anything) feels like turning into art,
- reflect on what we are discovering, maybe do some writing, work with some poetry prompts, or take some pictures
- close the session with an offering and thanks to the land, leaving it as we found it.
Here are some of the things we will consider BEFORE meeting if you book an outside session:
- Parking or transit availability,
- Bathroom access,
- Seating / body comfort needs (will we wander about, or sit at a bench, or lay on a blanket)
- Shade availability either under trees or a structure,
- Temperature regulation, do we have what we need in terms of cozy or cool?
- What are the backup plans if weather makes a drastic turn including when will we make a decision and how we will communicate the change plan,
- Privacy can be more challenging in public, so deciding ahead of time how we will respond if we run into people one of us knows,
So… then, what is OUTSIDER art?
Outsider Art has been defined as creative work made outside the boundaries of conventional art institutions—raw, untrained, intuitive, and often created in response to deep emotional or psychological need. Outsider art, in this context,is a way of surviving; for getting through; for living.
What we do in art therapy, in my opinion, is always OUTSIDER art because we focus on process over product/outcome and embrace that by nature of living we are all creative; all artists!! So many of us have been excluded, discouraged from knowing ourselves this way! (However, the term outsider is not neutral in the professional art world and I have included more information about the white supremist ableist history at the end of this article).
I consider myself an outside(r) artist because I came to art as a means of survival myself through my own lived and living experience, and am shaping my practice outside the rigid inhumane systems of violence within mental/health ‘care’ that are disconnecting and hurting us.
Madness / mental illness are concepts that have been constructed in line with our ability to meet the capitalistic demands of our society. But they are also constructed alongside systems like gender, race and colonization. Our mental health cannot be disentangled from the intertwined systems of white supremacy, ableism, gender depression, imperialism and capitalism. all forms of what we call illness or suffering interact with the political world – a world that is particularly deadly for certain bodies/mind
~Micha Frazer-Carroll author of Mad World: the politics of mental health p.55-56
Outside, the rules change. Outside, we remember that healing doesn’t always look like “getting better” or fixing something. Sometimes it looks like belonging.
Actually being outside and closer to land/earth (or even just remembering / imagining these connections) can counter the disconnection created by individualism, racial-capitalism, hetero/neuro-normativity and colonial ‘health-care’. Being outside can help us remember that we do belong to something beyond, before the socially constructed realities of right now.
Dr Edwardo Duran, author of Healing the Soul Wound, shares how the land is alive and conscious, not a resource or setting—it is a relative, an active participant in the healing process. He says healing must take place in relationship to land because trauma—including historical and intergenerational trauma—has separated people from their traditional territories, their practices, and the stories tied to place.
Outside holds a different kind of time—what author and ecologist Joanna Macy calls deep time—where decay is a sacred transition, where grief is rich compost, where emergence is slow, steady and nonlinear. In The Work That Reconnects, Macy invites us to remember that our pain for the world is not dysfunction but a sign of our participation. The Earth, in this view, is not a backdrop to our lives—but kin, collaborator, relative. We are nature—there is no separation.
When we come into relationship with outside – aka the land (and all the more-than-human kin who live there) – we rewire what healing can mean. It becomes less about fixing ourselves, and more about remembering how we are a part of (and held by) the fabric of things.
The tangled history of OUTSIDER ART
In the professional Art world (like where people make and seel their art) the category of outsider art has deep, tangled ties to racism, colonialism, and other systems of power and oppression within the context of the professional art world. It was a label historically used to other, exploit, and control people.
Outsider Art in the classical/formal art world is a category invented by insiders (aka: white dudes) to describe untrained creative work in order to exclude and maintain power and value of insider art. It is rooted in psychiatric and colonial histories of violence and erasure.
1940s: The term Art Brut (“raw art”) was coined by those who collected the work of untrained, marginalized creators—especially psychiatric patients, and people living outside of dominant culture (aka: white academic supremacy culture). By the 1970’s the definition broadened to include self-taught artists outside of the formal ‘art world’. Over time, outsider art became a marketable genre, with its own galleries, fairs (like the Outsider Art Fair in New York), and collectors.
The irony? A category originally defined to other and reject, became sought after and commodified (sound familiar? A tactic of white supremacy culture).
Many Black, Indigenous, neurodivergent, Mad, and/or disabled artists have interrogated the term outsider art as exclusionary and rooted in white, eurocentric, ableist frameworks. Many are now reclaiming the label —on their own terms with a clear focus that uplifts artists historically sidelined—many of whom are BIPOC, disabled, or neurodivergent—and reframes their work as culturally vital.
If you are curious to know more about me, my work or how Art Therapy (insider or outside!) might be a fit for you…
Sonya Gracey,
Art Therapy Practicum Candidate
otherwayscreative@proton.me
www.sonyagracey.com/otherways
@otherwayscreative
Reading List: Land, Liberation & Mental Health Justice
Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects (2014)
Joanna Macy & Molly Young Brown
Deep ecology meets collective healing. Practices for navigating climate grief, ecological collapse, and systemic unraveling through reconnection to Earth and each other.
Healing the Soul Wound: Counseling with American Indians and Other Native Peoples (2006) Eduardo Duran
Introduces Indigenous approaches to trauma healing that center land, spirit, ceremony, and the ongoing impacts of colonization.
Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health (2023)
Micha Frazer-Carroll
A fierce critique of psychiatry, capitalism, and racism in the mental health system. Offers a vision of mental health grounded in justice, abolition, and community autonomy.
Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice (2023)
Dr. Jennifer Mullan
Calls therapists, healers, and mental health practitioners into a politicized, trauma-informed, and decolonial practice rooted in ancestral remembrance and nervous system reclamation.
Toward Psychologies of Liberation (2008)
Mary Watkins & Helene Shulman
Foundational text for liberation psychologies, blending critical psychology with grassroots activism and community healing.
Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism (2021) Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
A bold, poetic call to let go of Western systems of domination and “hospice” them with care, grief, and responsibility. Explores decolonial living through humility, relationality, and spiritual practice—without rushing toward premature hope or solutions.
The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative (2018)
Florence Williams
Explores how time in nature supports cognitive functioning, creativity, mental health, and stress reduction, backed by neuroscience and cross-cultural research
