Pattern art therapy to combat chaotic busy life

4 min readDec 8, 2019

Patterns are recurring themes. Something that repeats in a predictable way is a pattern. In this day and age of extreme pressure to complete our task-lists, busy lifestyle finding your routine that is predictable is surely not a cake walk.

Apart from my morning cup of tea, most of my day passes by in fulfilling newer demands at workplace, unforeseen projects and tasks, newer challenges that often leaves me drained. Agility and dynamism is a new normal to survive this era. So, what’s our combat to find peace amidst this chaos?

I started making pattern art a few years ago, I primarily worked on two art forms — Zentangle & Color-blocking. And it surely has helped me find harmony and peace! Before I jump to advocate these techniques let me introduce these art forms in brief.

Zentangle is a form of meditative doodling that has patterns or tangles. Zentangle art is non-representational and unplanned so you can focus on each stroke and not worry about the result. It mostly encompasses of patterns that are repeated. Here is one of my zentangle art.

Color-blocking is thought of as the exploration of taking colors on the color wheel and pairing them together to make interesting combinations and patterns. The elements are usually basic geometric shapes. Here is a quick view of color block art.

Both these art forms has one thing in common — the recurring themes. And every occasion I painted/created them the effects were very similar.

To practice these art forms, I had to zone-out from the multiple tasks/ thoughts/ worries that were running in my mind and learn to ‘live in that present moment’.

I often made mistakes when I tried multi-tasking. I painted the color in the wrong block, I created an unwanted extra spiral in the tangle. But, when I did ‘live the moment’ it was truly beautiful. I did not even realize how time passed by, it was serene and calming. There was true ‘joy in the process’. Looking back at those art-work made me happy and elated.

While, Carl Jung’s work on Mandala art has a psychological take on pattern drawing. It explores the sub-conscious mind through symbolism.

The simplistic pattern creation has a very functional take on calming our minds. Its sense of repetition rather assures you that ‘after-all its not that difficult task! You have done it once, you just need to repeat it again’. It reassures the confidence in you and brings in a sense of stability and calmness in your otherwise challenging and ever-changing life that awaits to critically evaluate you most of the times.

Here is a glimpse of my work. It has been a fascinating journey, my search and love for patterns led me to the intricate wall art of Alhambra Granada Palace, Spain where I learnt about Islamic geometric art. I found my peace in patterns and colors :)