What Art Therapy Means for You: Big Feelings, Safe Hands, Still Soft Clay (Part 2)
All photos in this post were taken at a live workshop led by Prof. Hildrun Rolff in our studio.
In Part 1, we saw that your mind is not only in your head. The thinking happens in the making, and the material answers back.
So what does that mean for you, sitting at the art table? Four things.
1. Big feelings come within reach
A tool in your hand quietly becomes part of your body.
The puzzle of the blind man's stick
Here is an old puzzle Malafouris borrows from philosophers. A blind man walks with a stick. Where does the man end? At his hand? At the tip of the stick?
When he walks, he does not feel the stick pressing into his palm. He feels the kerb. His sense of touch has travelled to the end of the stick.
Studies on tool use show something similar. After people use a tool for a while, the space along the tool starts to count as "near", as if the body had grown a little longer.
At the art table
A brush or a crayon works the same way. Your reach extends into the paper.
Something that felt far away, too big to touch, comes within reach. On the page you can move it, soften it, or make room around it.
2. Nobody reads your picture
A mark is not a secret code, so nobody can decode your secrets from your drawing.
This is a real worry for many people:
"If I draw, will someone see straight into me?"
The dictionary myth
We tend to treat marks like words in a dictionary. Red means angry. A small figure means low self-worth. Crack the code and you know the person.
Malafouris says marks do not work that way. A mark does not point to a meaning hidden somewhere else. The meaning is made in the making, between the hand, the material and the moment.
Think of a laugh. A laugh is not a symbol of joy. It is joy happening.
So the same red can be heat, a festival, a warning, or a grandmother's lipstick. Only the person who made it can find which, and sometimes it is more than one.
That is why we do not interpret your work. We ask what you notice. You stay the author of your own meaning.
3. You are still soft clay
People are never fully "fired", so change stays possible at any age.
Once a pot goes into the kiln, its shape is fixed. You can still paint the surface, but you cannot squeeze the form any more.
Many of us quietly believe people are like that. Our shape was set in childhood, and after that only the paint changes: new clothes, new job, same person underneath.
Malafouris disagrees. He says humans are better pictured as the pot before the kiln: shaped enough to recognise, but still soft. Not finished. Becoming.
Change takes a path, not a moment
Walk across the same grass every day and a path appears. Then the path makes walking easier. Our minds and the things we make change together like that, slowly, through repetition.
One good session can open a door. A path needs many walks.
4. Meaning grows in between
Meaning does not live inside you alone. Malafouris says it lives in between: between you, the material and the people around you.
That is why making art with a facilitator who witnesses, and does not interpret, is different from doodling alone at home.
What this does not mean
None of this makes art a quick fix. Being honest about the limits matters as much as the idea itself.
This does NOT mean… | What it does mean |
Art "heals" by itself | The material, the person and the space work together |
Colours and shapes have fixed meanings | Only the maker can find what their mark means |
Change is fast | Paths take many walks |
It replaces help in a crisis | If you are struggling right now, please reach out to a qualified professional or a local helpline |
It suits everyone | Some people find it opens things up; some do not, and that is fine |
Come and feel it, not just read it
You can read about thinking with your hands, but you understand it only by doing it.
At Art Based Coaching, we journey with you.
We bring the materials, the space and a facilitator who witnesses without interpreting.
You bring your hands.
See our upcoming workshops at artbasedcoaching.com, or write to us at info@artbasedcoaching.com.
Missed the first half? Read Part 1: How Art Therapy Works →
Source: Lambros Malafouris, People Are STRANGE: Material Engagement and the Creation of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press, 2026). All ideas are paraphrased in my own words.
Photos: live workshop led by Prof. Hildrun Rolff at the Art Based Coaching studio, Petaling Jaya. Diagrams: Art Based Coaching.
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