Outside(r) Art
doing art outside is potent, tangled and important
Outside(r) Art @otherwayscreative
In June and July I will be offering some art therapy sessions outside! Which I am calling Outside(r) art …and its been so fun to be thinking about all the ways this is inspiring, especially in this time of year, but also in this time in the world when we all need ways to get out of our heads, and into our creative-related selves as a means of getting through our day to day lives.
I acknowledge as I write this piece that having access to the safety and shelter that indoor space offers is not available to everybody in our communities - and that in many ways my access here on the stolen, unsurrended lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples is rooted in land theft and unearned access to wealth based on my race, class, and gender. My practice is rooted in a model of community accountability for these truths, and this article is part of my own process of offering and learning. I also acknowledge that outdoors is not an easy place for lots of folks - it can feel big and bright and overwhelming - so if what I share is not for you, that’s ok, and I hope you are able to be where it feels just right for you.
The world outside of the confines of spaces we call our homes, offices, businesses, social centers etc. offers so so much - it makes me giddy – just walk out the door to find twigs, sticks, rocks, leaves, moss, grasses, flowers as well as other found items (like shiny trash and recycling!)! Coloniality tells us these are resources to be consumed, taken, used - Outside(r) Art engages us as kin to these elements of our world. Relating with our senses of sight, sound, touch, smell (maybe even taste!) to listen, learn, converse and collaborate with our surroundings. Just noticing what that relationship feels like is a powerful start. Possible art shapes could include collage, sculpture or mandala, capturing moments in photographs or working with movement poetry or song…all can be an offering back, in reverence and respect for the exchange.
not consuming, laying claim, or taking with but playing and creating that which is temporary - - to notice, and engage with what is around us and arises within us, leaving the spaces we move in just as we found them - taking with us our enhanced sense of that which is eternal.
To me, Outside Art is any art made outdoors or in natural settings, or inside with outside nature materials - now, Outside(r) Art is that PLUS intentionally challenging norms, domination, oppression, inequity, binary…resisting our own patterns of diminishment and following our relatedness by being and creating outside!
Similar to eco-art or nature-based therapy, doing art therapy outside as Outside(r) Art brings all sorts of benefits and opportunities! When we do Outside(r) Art we work with what is – and we work within 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 a cake!
Outside - Outside(r) - Outsider
The concept of ‘Outsider Art’ (note: lack of parenthesis) has been around a long time 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. And there is a tangled history …
In the ‘professional’ art world (like where people make and sell 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.
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.
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, prevented, restricted from knowing our creative selves living in a world that praises and rewards black and white, linear, logical, concrete, perfectionist and performative ways of being. The colourful, messy, intuitive, irrational, joyfulness of ART is an antidote; an act of solidarity and community care!
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
Outside, the rules change. Outside, we remember that healing doesn’t always look like “getting better” or fixing something. Often, 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.
doing Outside(r) Art is potent, tangled and important.
If you are curious to know more about me, my work or how Outside(r) Art (inside or outside!) might be a fit for you…reach out!
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) by 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) by 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) by 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) by 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) by 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) by 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) by Florence Williams
Explores how time in nature supports cognitive functioning, creativity, mental health, and stress reduction, backed by neuroscience and cross-cultural research