Mini Canvas Silhouette

Purpose and goals:

This directive invites clients to explore grief, loss, or meaningful memories through the metaphor of a silhouette placed against a gradient backdrop of emotional color. The gradient represents the internal landscape of feelings, while the silhouette becomes a symbol of a memory, person, or experience that has become emotionally “shadowed”—present but changed.

The process supports slow emotional engagement, expressive release, and symbolic meaning-making without requiring direct verbalization of difficult emotions.

  • Facilitate safe emotional expression through intuitive work and metaphor rather than literal narrartive.

  • Promote externalization of grief by giving form to a memory of loss through silhouette.

  • Support meaning-making through visual symbolism, memory, and emotions.

  • Allow client to express sadness and complex emotions safely.

  • Foster empowerment and agency through creative decision-making

Theoretical Rationale:

Arts-Based Grief Processing (Strickl & Klein, 2023) • https://doi.org/10.1080/17533015.2025.2567566

Painting through grief and loss (Strickl & Klein, 2023) demonstrates that painting allows individuals to engage with grief somatically and symbolically, reducing the need for linear verbal explanation. Color gradients can mirror emotional movement, while imagery such as silhouettes can externalize feelings that may be difficult to articulate.

Supervisor Art Therapy Rationale:

Silhouettes act as a metaphor for absence, the impact of loss, or the way memories shift into less defined forms. The high contrast mirrors the emotional complexity of grief: vivid internal emotions contrasted with the “shadow” of loss.

Art-Making:

  1. Begin with a Gradient (Emotional Ground)

  • Invite the client to choose colors that match or express the feelings on their mind today.

  • Paint a gradient—top to bottom or side to side—letting colors blend, bleed, or contrast.

  • Encourage them to work slowly and let their hand move without judgment.

Prompt: Let the colors reflect whatever you’re carrying today—calm, chaos, heaviness, hope. They don’t need to match or make sense. Just move your brush and let the background emerge.

  1. Identify a Silhouette (Memory Symbol)

Ask the client to think of a:

  • memory,

  • person,

  • meaningful object,

  • place,

  • symbol, or

  • image connected to grief or loss.

Prompt: Your silhouette can represent someone you miss, a moment you long for, or a memory you want to honor. It can be literal or abstract—whatever feels right.

  1. Add the Silhouette

  • Once the gradient dries, paint (or collage) a dark silhouette over the gradient.

  • Encourage bold contrast but keep the form simple—no details needed.

  • Emphasize that the power lies in the contrast, not precision.

Prompt: This silhouette becomes the story, the memory, or the presence. You can let it be as simple as a shape or as symbolic as you’d like.

Reflection Questions:

After the painting is complete, ask them to pause and observe:

  • Which colors did you choose and why do you think they felt right today?

  • In what ways does this silhouette mirror your experience of grief?

  • If the silhouette could speak, what might it say?

  • What does this image help you understand about where you are in your grieving process?

  • How might this piece serve as a reminder, companion, or symbol moving forward?

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