#024 - Mindful Painting - Art as an Essential for Wellbeing with Zena El Farra

Zena El Farra, the founder of MasterPeace Creative Studios, a drop-in art experience in central London where guest who want to learn to paint mindfully and express themselves creatively. In this interview Zena shares a bit about her background and journey from a career in banking to opening her own art and wellness business. We talk about how painting can be a great alternative to mediation, and how creativity can be such a restorative experience, and is important to our overall wellbeing. Zena explains how she understands that painting can be intimidating for a beginner, or somebody who hasn’t practiced art since high school, and how this helped her create a technique at MasterPeace that takes away some of the barriers that prevent people from enjoying painting. We talk about all kinds of aspects of creativity, from how being relaxed is importance to be in the creative process, the importance of play, how different artists find inspiration, and how creativity is a practice that needs nurturing. One of the key takeaways from this discussion, for me, was that creativity is a lesson in self-acceptance. As someone who was repeatedly told at school that I was no good at art, it is encouraging to hear as an adult that creativity, in it’s many forms, is a part of all of us. I also found it interesting that painting, and art in general, can be a great processing tool for some people. Not everyone is going to be into writing as a means to reflect, so this was a great perspective to hear about on this podcast. Show notes: https://elizabethdhokia.com/zenaelfarra #GoodLifeUnravelled