Wellbeing and Art - Following Frida Kahlo Intimate Diary
By Dr Susana Enriquez
Frida Kahlo's Intimate Diary workshop is a guided space to direct you to create, like Frida, a personal diary of reflection, self-knowledge and personal renewal. The workshop offers a gateway to the process of exploring your inner world and your creative self through exercises to clear, rest and observe the mind with introspection activities and creative exercises. Research has shown the power of meditation and the science behind it. One of the reasons it is so powerful is that it fosters acceptance. Creating art is a type of meditation, an active training of the mind that increases awareness and emphasizes acceptance of feelings and thoughts without judgment and relaxation of body and mind. Art provides a feeling of flow and freedom. Art, like meditation, allows us to create space between our often negative, anxious thoughts and connect with our true selves. Similarly to meditation, art can help us tap into a more in-depth and quieter part of ourselves. We enter into a state of flow and present-moment awareness. The process of making art overrides the need for verbal communication. Happiness may be less a matter of experiencing sharp highs (often followed by deep lows). It is more a matter of nurturing a space that provides stability and a constant connection to our true selves.
About the Artist
Dr Susana Enriquez
Dr. Susana Enriquez, née Alfaro, is a Mexican born, Australian visual artist, researcher and curator.
Susana's art education began in the field of music as a student of flute and percussion instruments. She obtained a bachelor degree in Visual Arts, with majors in painting and Printmaking, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a MA from the same University. In 2001 she came to Australia as an international student; as a two scholarships recipient, from the University of Newcastle, to obtain a PhD degree in Fine Arts.
Susana is a visual artist who paints, draws and etches. She works in a wide range of media. Her theme has been the music in painting, but not limited to it. Susana believes in the emotional power of music, which allows the listener a freedom of imagination, interpretation and emotional response, based not on the literal or the descriptive, but the abstract connection of painting through different emotions, which develops through her creative process. She works on exploring her inner self, expressing in her artworks what she is sensing and discovering around her environment, her time and her space. The abstract painting of this author oscillates between subtlety and drama; between action painting and dripping. With a firm intention and polysemic character, it combines fluidity and accident with planning and decision implied in a safe and natural line, which culminates in complex structures of shape and colour. As an author, in 2014 she published the Book, Migration: Identity and Memory, with photographs and interviews from Latin-American women who migrated to Australia since the XX century. As a researcher she worked in different projects in the last five years at the National Library for the Arts, the Institute of Fine Arts and the National Sound archives in Mexico City. Since 2019, Susana began successfully to work on Wellbeing and Art, following Frida Kahlo diary.