LEAH GUZMAN

ARTIST BIO

Leah Guzman is a professional artist and Board Certified Art Therapist.​ ​Leah is a mixed media painter whose style is contemporary, symbolic, and spirited in nature. Her work can be found in private collections, Shirley Riley Ability Lab, Jackson South Hospital, and Society of Vascular Interventional Neurology. She has partnered with brands like Bombay Sapphire, Sacred Space Miami, and West Elm. She also has been featured in Spirituality & Health and Self Magazines.

Her mission is to offer the gift of creativity to others as a way to heal and manifest their most authentic self and best life. She provides online art therapy sessions supporting creative individuals dealing with anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Her signature course, Art of Healing and Manifesting, teaches the tools to align your energy to attract desires. She incorporates a holistic approach to up-level every area of your life. She also has a new book released, “Essential Art Therapy Exercises”.


ARTIST STATEMENT

The Collective Intelligence art series is based on the idea of a large number of people sharing their knowledge with one another to support and better the lives of each other. When we work together in community we can bring about change, power, and transformation for yourself and others. You can see this in nature as seen with birds, bees, and fish that swarm together. The creatures in the art, such as the birds, symbolize the collective intelligence.

This little Warbler bird has been showing up in my life lately. This creature symbolizes the use of endurance and patience. How long are you willing to wait and how far are you willing to go in order for you to achieve your dreams? Warblers can teach us those things. This animal is showing us that in order for us to succeed in life, we must be persistent and we must possess a level of tenacity to endure the trials that life would bring us. Believe that everything you do and every decision you make takes you a bit closer to the life that you dream of. Do not let go of that dream, believe and you will get there.

The hexagon is symbolic for love, sincerity, truth, lovers, harmony, equality, perfection, integration, conjoining, reliability, dependability, and communication. Hexagons are found in nature as a building block for creation, as seen in beehives and water crystallization. This pattern has tessellation showing that everything in life is interconnected.


"I’ve been an artist all my life, yet motherhood brought me to the realization that my art is a necessity for self-care. Motherhood brought an awakening that sharing my work holds power to amplify my own happiness and that it will ripple out to others.

A little background of my story is that I’ve been practicing art therapy for 17 years. I knew the power of art and its healing effect on others. There was a time when my own personal art practice was put on the back burner. I had gotten married to my amazing husband, working full time as an art therapist, and gave birth to two beautiful healthy children. When my kids were young, ages 5 and 2, my emotional state took a huge hit. My kids were doing great, we had a home, consistent work, yet my anxiety was at an all time high. I was experiencing bouts of depression and burn out. I would wake up in the middle of the night doodling in my journal trying to make sense of the overwhelm. Eventually, I sought help from an art therapist. The art therapist supported me emotionally and helped me sort out my direction. It gave me an opportunity to realize I needed to get back into my art and nurture my soul.

Through the sessions I created my 1st art therapy children’s book, Rad is Smad! It’s about a monster truck who was feeling sad and mad because he wasn’t taking care of himself. At the time I didn’t even realize it was really about me! I thought I was creating it for my son who loved monster trucks and the art therapy students I would meet for sessions.

After a year of marketing and sharing the book I realized I really wanted to dive deeper into my art practice and share it with the world. Growing up my art was a personal experience. The transition to motherhood helped me realize I wanted to be bolder and share it with the world. Since then I’ve had some really cool experiences of having a solo exhibit, exhibiting at neurosurgery conferences, participating in several Miami Art weeks, a billboard with my art, selling consistently online, and writing a second art therapy book to help others heal emotional suffering.

My art saved me. The dark night of the soul can be the awakening that catapults the light to new beginnings. Looking back I see how motherhood helped me mother myself. A happy mother creates happy kids. It’s a ripple effect for self-care."


Website: www.leahguzman.com
Instagram: @leah.guzman.art