Contributor: Ruth Simmons
Ruth Simmons on. Nursology.net Aesthetic Knowing

Art allows access to the spirit and promotes profound experiences of healing through imaginative expression of emotions through intuition and caring.¹ Just as the artist serves as a conduit for an image to come to life through a paintbrush, the mindbodyspirit of the nurse emerges as a channel for human connection to transmit caring-healing energy to others in a unique interpretation of socially constructed reality. The nurse’s own energy combines with the force of environment’s and the other person’s energy to promote healing.^2,3 This simultaneous interaction enhances feelings of joy, acceptance, and compassion.⁴

Transpersonal caring through art and nursing encourages self-healing patterns and self-knowledge possibilities through multiple ways of knowing, fostering spiritual growth and soul care for the wounded healer.^4,5 Lindell and Chinn⁶ assert how aesthetic knowing aids the nurse to embrace what is possible by embodying creativity and empathy over formal or descriptive expression. Common experiences and abstract emotions are conveyed through art’s universal language, where each person expresses their uniqueness through non-empirical means to achieve significance and transformation.

Aesthetic and personal knowing act interdependently,⁶ where the art of nursing harmoniously carries connotations of beauty and creativity. Personal knowing allows nurses to look inward and reflect on their thoughts, feelings, and lived experience. A theoretical framework of Unitary Caring Science invites the spirit’s presence and person’s energy.^5,7 The nurse’s nature of being is an artist, conducting healing to flow from lower energy of negative disease to higher energy of transcendence, being, and becoming.⁵ Nurses support, guide, and heal themselves and others on a journey towards well-becoming by appreciating the human-environment-spirit connection.

 Completing the twelve-week Healing with the Arts⁸ program offers a transformative experience of understanding what it means to be ontologically creative. Experimenting with a variety of visual arts mediums garners a sense of wonder and inquiry, celebrating a dynamic reality and personal reflection. My chosen medium of painting encouraged a deeper expression of complex thought, communicating the essence of an experience to speak directly from my soul. Perfectionism, rigidness of thought, and fear of failure gave way to courage, spiritual enlightenment, and healing. An action-oriented energy of the divine masculine gave way to the divine feminine, allowing freedom in creation and caring to embrace the irrational and erratic.⁸ 

The first week of the Healing with the Arts curriculum asked the artist-healer to let go of their inner critic. The first image represents my own inner critic and my inner artist coming together in a cohesive image. Influenced by Mother Nature, I painted a human heart being wrapped in thorns, yet also blooming with wildflowers. My inner critic has the potential to wound just as much as it can yield a bountiful blossom. This imagery illustrated the importance of peacefully embracing and respecting this capability while encouraging growth. Forgiving the thorns of my inner critic lets my artist shine.

The next step in the program is to merge the inner artist and healer. Through participating in the guided imagery and thoughtfully considering the origins of what brought me to caring-healing, I came to understand that my own inner healer came from a place of uncertainty. This led to me visualizing the right-brain, left-brain dichotomy of logical and creative thought. To me, this also represents the art and science of nursing and how both are vitally important. Instead of a harsh line separating the two, a soft blend of colors overlaps in the florals and shapes. When the inner artist and healer experience cohesion, a strong artist-healer emerges. The process of engaging in the arts incites an insatiable hunger to learn more and supports inner healing in the pursuit of transpersonal caring. My paintings depict a journey of inner healing and transcendence into transpersonal nursing as an ontological artist. Art produced from each week of the praxis along with a description of the healing journey can be accessed from the Aesthetic Knowing Scholar/Artist Gallery . A recording of the full experience is featured on the Nursing Way website.

References

1. Edwards SD. The art of nursing. Nursing Ethics. Sep 1998;5(5):393-400. doi:10.1177/096973309800500503
2. Rogers M. An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing. F. A. Davis; 1970.
3. Caratao-Mojica R. The Science of Unitary Human Beings in a Creative Perspective. Nurs Sci Q. Oct 2015;28(4):297-9. doi:10.1177/0894318415599219
4. Watson J. Postmodern Nursing and Beyond. 1st Edition ed. Churchill Livingstone; 1999.
5. Watson J, Smith MC. Caring science and the science of unitary human beings: a trans-theoretical discourse for nursing knowledge development. Journal of Advanced Nursing. Mar 2002;37(5):452-61. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2648.2002.02112.x
6. Rosa W, Horton-Deutsh A, Watson JE. A Handbook for Caring Science: Expanding the Paradigm. Springer Publisher; 2018.
7. Samuels M, Lane MR. Healing with the arts: A 12-week program to heal yourself and your community. Atria Paperback; 2013.

About Ruth Simmons

Ruth Simmons is a self-taught artist and dedicated Nurse with eight years of experience, initially in labor and delivery and currently in a leadership role within the operating room. Residing on an acreage in rural Nebraska, Ruth enjoys nurturing a garden and connecting with her animals. A passionate painter, Ruth works with acrylics and oils to express her creativity. As a PhD student in the Caring Science program at the University of Colorado Anschutz, Ruth collaborated with Dr. Mary Rockwood Lane on an independent study in “Healing with the Arts.” This experience deepened Ruth’s understanding of Transpersonal Nursing as an ontological artist, focusing on self-healing to enhance compassion for oneself and others. Her ultimate goal is to explore resiliency in Nurses through arts-based research.