Healing through art

Art as a therapy is increasingly catching up in Oman as it helps people improve their quality of life.

In Oman, a young amateur artist uses art for therapeutic purposes and is a certified pranic healer who has evolved a distinct style of her own painting from her instincts.

Sayyida Bushra bint Hamood al Busaidi took to painting by chance as a stress buster due to a personal loss and her younger son who was diagnosed with autism. Her journey with art as a therapy began about five years and has so far had a successful ride.

Art and healing techniques go hand in hand for Bushra. These techniques help her release negative thoughts and emotions like fear, anger, and resentment that may limit her from achieving greater potential.

While at the canvas, Bushra disconnects from everything, which gives her peace for hours. Inspired by lovely places, especially the forests and nature, she charts her course of artwork. She goes on her work at one go which can go from two hours to eight hours on some occasions.

If the many beaches in Oman especially during sunrise inspire her, similarly forests and lakes in Austria and Scottish highlands amaze her.

“I believe that painting is a reflection of thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Every painting has a story behind them and I am grateful that I have come to realize that everything has a solution as well.

“I consider art is one way of healing and surrendering to a canvas releasing everything out in a painting is just the beauty of it. Every stroke of my brush in each colour, I choose to reflect that state of mind. A healing touch forces the connection between the mind, the body, and the canvas in front of me. It engages my mind to be more aware and focused to release and let go of whatever is going on at that time.”

“It releases different patterns and styles of art but I would say it is mostly a mixture of stress, anger, and fear that I find art heals it all,” she explains.

The emotions, feelings which vary from grief to anger to stress and anxiety in some occasions are transformed in her distinctive canvas.

These can be mountains, rivers, waves, birds, or anything connected to nature and life. “I paint according to my feeling but I usually have a season of forests, abstracts followed by the beaches,” she adds.

She titled her first solo exhibition ‘Absence’ as she explains about the feeling of absence of life across a phase in life. “Absence from emotions and feelings or absence from a loss of a loved one.”

The exhibition had 11 paintings and each one had a lesson learned from an absence in her life.

As a full time pharmacist and mother of an autistic child, she feels that there is always a solution to all issues.

She mentions how one has to cross moments where our emotions, feelings and thoughts are absent. “All we need to do is to be aware of them by disconnecting from the chaos of life, those of which are present in my artworks,” she concludes.

Bushra plans to come out with her second solo exhibition sometime in July 2023 along the lines of her earlier exhibition ‘Absence,’ held at Hormuz Grand Muscat, A Radisson Collection Hotel.