That's what many doctors, nurses, therapists and bodyworkers who make art believe, as can be seen in "Rx Art: Take Your Medicine," on view through Nov. 1 at Bihl Haus Arts.

"We organized the exhibit as a celebration of the importance of the arts as healer and renewer of individual lives and communities," said Kellen Kee McIntyre, executive director. "We wanted to show the art of healers, and we asked them how their art influences their self-care or the care of their patients. Many of these healers consider art vital to their own well being, and the phrase ‘Physician, heal thyself,' kept coming up. Bihl Haus has been doing a lot of art programs for seniors, and we've begun to notice a real improvement in their lives, both physically and mentally."

Health and Healing Consortium, a nonprofit information source about health resources in San Antonio, is the co-organizer of the exhibit. Paula Davies, who heads the consortium, said that scientific studies during the past 20 years have shown that art can have a beneficial influence on health.

"Somehow, art has become chopped off and separated from the rest of society," Davies said. "And art is something that only a few are supposed to be able to do and understand. There's almost a cultural bias against art. But when you look back at human history, art has always been very much a part of daily life. There's more to health than being poked once a year by a doctor. Art gives people a way to express themselves, and to connect to parts of themselves that they might be overlooking."

Davies, trained in the Japanese form of energy healing called reiki, uses photography to keep her eye trained to observe subtleties in her clients' bodies, mind and spirit. Her images, "Meditation" and "Natural Spiral," focus on spontaneous patterns found in nature.

Dr. Jane Appleby said she uses art to tune into her right-brain thinking. Generally, left-brain thinking is considered logical and linear, while right-brain thinking is considered intuitive and primarily visual. Appleby is showing an expressionistic drawing of a vibrating heart titled "Wild Heart" and a stone carving, "Sacred Heart."

"The first step toward being a healer is to tend to one's own needs," Appleby said. "By using art to access the right brain, we can express things that can't be expressed verbally. I'm not sure how flexible the San Antonio medical community is about accepting nontraditional healing techniques, but we're seeing more blending of Eastern and Western medicine. Studies published in well-regarded journals have shown the positive effects of yoga and tai chi. This exhibit is fantastic because it shows a wide array of healers with a lot of different ways to make art. And it's pretty good art."

Dr. Raphael Guerra, a dentist and contemporary art collector, turned to portrait painting to deal with the grief of losing a 12-year-old niece, Natalie, to cancer.

"I've been a great friend of the San Antonio art community for many years, but it wasn't until my niece's courageous battle with cancer three years ago that I was compelled to paint," Guerra said. "The portrait in the show was done from a photograph that was taken shortly after she had a leg amputated. It made me dive into portrait painting, and I started taking weekly Friday art lessons with my father-in-law, Richard Martinez. I worked on the portrait for four or five months, and was able to show it to her just a few hours before she died. For me, painting the portrait was very cathartic."

He's kept up his painting, and he says it's given him new inspiration and drive in his dental practice.

"There's a lot of burn?out in dentistry, but painting has given me a release from some of the pressures," Guerra said. "I like portrait painting because there is so much emphasis on getting the details right, and that's something that dentists have to worry about a lot when we're doing crowns and orthodontic work and so on. As a dentist, I always feel like I could do better. Painting has shown me that no work turns out perfect — but striving to be perfect is a good way to reach excellence."

Michelle Belto, trained as an expressive arts therapist, used handmade paper, a photograph and acrylics in her mixed-media piece, "Her Side of the Bed is Silent," based on her reactions to her husband's work with a men's grief support group.

"My husband is a psychoanalyst and he used to come home with heartbreaking stories about the men's group," Belto said. "One man, a World War II veteran who had been married for 50 years, said that after his wife died, he didn't turn back her side of the bed, just slipped under the covers on his side. And one night, it just hit him that her side was silent, and it was always going to be silent. My work is about knowing our own stories. When we have an experience that deeply affects the direction of our life, that experience is captured in images that we internalize.

"When I use art to work with others, I use a process that comes from the work of Susan Schneier-Miedzinski. Her process, called imagery/movement, uses a variety of modalities to heighten the image along with a variety of ways to understand its meaning. The work starts with a series of doodles or scribbles on a page and often leads to profound insights for the clients. It's a way of allowing the right side of the brain to communicate with the left. I ask them a lot of questions to help them understand what they've done, so a Gestalt approach feeds into the process."

Kathleen McBride, trained in Rolfing, a system of body education and physical manipulation, works with glass, but says it has many structural similarities to flesh and bone.

"Both glass and the body have fluidity, elasticity and plasticity," McBride said. "I work to make things structurally sound, and there's also an artistry to Rolfing. With glass, I use heat and gravity. And in Rolfing, I also use gravity, but it's a different kind of creativity. Working with glass keeps me connected to the creativity that facilitates positive change in my Rolfing clients. I couldn't do one or the other as they are so intertwined within me."

While art may not have the actual healing power of medicine, all of these artist/healers think that making art can be good for you. Although art is easily dismissed as a luxury, humans have been making art since the dawn of recorded history, and usually for reasons other than decoration — such as for teaching and ritual purposes. And these artists show that art can be cathartic, a way of breaking through the barrier between the verbally oriented left brain and the visually oriented right, to express emotions and insights that can't be said with words.

"Rx Art: Take Your Medicine" runs through Nov. 1 at Bihl Haus Arts, 2803 Fredericksburg Road, (210) 383-9723, www.bihlhausarts.org.

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