Lola Rodríguez and Miguel Romerosan began collaborating with Scarpia about five years ago. Back then, they already did it by getting involved with the local elders, for whom, like the little ones, this art festival always has a place in their programming.
Today, the bet of this couple remains the same: art as integrative therapy for a sector of the population that often feels somewhat invisible. Sometimes misunderstood, like the abstract painting that not all eyes are capable of scrutinizing. Perhaps for this reason, this year, Rodríguez and Romero have sought, among other things, to arouse the curiosity of their students based on the art of Wassily Kandinsky, who was one of the initiators of 20th century abstract art.
“What is most surprising is how receptive they are towards art,” Rodríguez explains to this newspaper about his students, more or less fifteen women (and some men), who have complied in the three sessions he has given in his workshop. , aptly titled From within: Spirituality.
Conveniently because this year’s edition of Scarpia, number 21 already, once again has the plastic arts as its backbone, paying special attention to the spiritual nature of visual language. So the choice of the theme or of a painter like Kandinsky seems completely correct, despite how indecipherable his work may seem a priori.
Rodríguez denies the major. “They are super attentive, super receptive, they always want to know more. And when you explain the painting to them, they freak out. They like to paint, but what is surprising is their desire to know”, points out the teacher, who has told her students, among other things, how the painter of Russian origin proposed a vision of color with totally spiritual, interior, absolute connotations. .
This has been only part of a workshop designed for the participants to be able to express their “feelings, affections and emotions”, and which has been held at the Center for Active Participation in El Carpio, where this woman usually works with the elderly. , and where it affects the benefits of art at a cognitive, psychomotor or social level.
“Art as a therapy that improves your emotional state and your general well-being”, sums up the teacher, who has worked these days on the concept of spirituality with a group of people who, inevitably, have associated it with religion. What does spirituality bring you? Well, “security, inner peace and better communication”. “They have even gotten emotional. Some have said that they have become angry with God, which is something that is not always told, ”explains Rodríguez.
The workshop has also resorted to music therapy, the first link that united Scarpia with this marriage, and which this year has worked on spirituality based on Christmas carols. All very typical of this time of year, among other things because the students have ended up exhibiting some of their works at the Christmas Market held in the municipality last weekend.
Rodríguez states: “At the end of the day, it is about making them feel that they continue to be part of society. That they do not feel that they are displaced”.