%0 Journal Article
%T ¡®I Want to Live, I Want to Draw¡¯: The Poetics of Drawing and Graphic Medicine
%A Anu Mary Peter
%A Sathyaraj Venkatesan
%J Journal of Creative Communications
%@ 0973-2594
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0973258618761406
%X Accredited as the provenance of creative art and appreciated for its verisimilar mimetic virtues, drawing is a cathartic form of visual art. Specifically, the curative utility of drawing is anchored on its multifaceted health-enhancing qualities. Drawing is often practised either as a technique of narration, as in visual communication, or as a therapeutic exercise, as in clinical contexts. Interestingly, in the field of graphic medicine, which is a productive intersection of comics and medicine, drawing is practised both as a narrative technique as well as a mode of therapy. Analysing scenes of drawing in selected graphic medicine memoirs such as David Small¡¯s Stitches: A Memoir (2009, New York: W.W. Norton & Co) and Katie Green¡¯s Lighter than My Shadow (2013, London: Random House), this article investigates how these graphic medical narratives offer an insight into the healing potentials of drawing. This article uses the term ¡®drawing¡¯ in two distinct yet interrelated senses: one is the process of drawing which denotes the depiction of the artist himself/herself involved in the act of drawing, and the other is the end product of drawing such as the picture/image or painting. By elaborating the psychological benefits of drawing, the article also brings into relief how the act of drawing facilitates self-reclamation by assisting patients or traumatized individuals in resolving their chaos through creative expression
%K Drawing
%K art
%K graphic medicine
%K comics
%K healing
%K therapy
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0973258618761406