Art as Expression and Healing

Art as emotional expression and healing is a recurring idea in Shelby Anderson Barnum’s story: creative work gives feeling a visible or audible form, while also creating occasions for attention and connection. Drawing lets an observer recognize sadness Shelby does not explain; shared artistic interests bring her and Jungkook Jeon closer; and music offers comfort when words alone cannot settle distress. The story presents art not as a cure, but as one means through which emotion can be noticed, communicated, and met by another person.

Making emotion visible

A landscape assignment at Central Washington University gives this idea a particularly clear form. After the class is sent to find an inspiring place, Shelby goes to Ellensburg Forest, settles on the dock with a sketchbook and pencil, and studies the lake and trees before drawing them. Jungkook is nearby, drawing too. They spend about an hour working in the same peaceful setting, each absorbed in the landscape and in the work taking shape on paper.

The drawing does more than identify its location. When Shelby brings it back, her instructor recognizes both the restorative quality of the natural scene and a note of sadness in its depiction. He observes that an artist’s feelings can remain legible in the work even when the artist tries to keep them private. His reading leaves Shelby momentarily stunned; the interpretation is not presented as a diagnosis, but it makes visible a feeling that she has not voiced. The scene turns artistic skill into a form of indirect communication: the landscape is carefully observed, yet the image also carries something of the person observing it.

This double quality matters to the project’s account of expression. Shelby’s drawing is not described as a confession she deliberately offers. Rather, its emotional meaning emerges through the instructor’s close attention to the finished image. Art allows an inner state to appear without requiring Shelby to explain it first, while the response to the work gives that state a witness.

Shared creative practice

Art also gives Shelby and Jungkook a reason to share space and attention. In the forest, their drawing session unfolds side by side without requiring conversation. Shelby listens to Dream a Little Dream of Me as she works; Jungkook, close enough to hear her singing, continues his own drawing. Each is engaged in an individual task, but the scene joins them through a common place, a shared activity, and the sound of her voice.

Their university assignments extend that connection into collaboration. When the photography instructor sets a final project, students are asked to make black-and-white photographs on any subject, with particular attention to contrast, shadow, and light. Shelby is uninspired by the assignment, and Jungkook initially appears similarly unsure. Looking at her, however, he sees the possibility of making her the subject and asks whether the project may be completed in pairs. The instructor agrees, and Jungkook’s question turns a broad technical exercise into the prospect of work undertaken together. The scene links artistic decision-making with observation of another person: his idea begins in the act of looking at Shelby.

Their interests also meet in a class on Japanese art. Shelby is fascinated by tattooing, and Jungkook’s tattoos intensify that interest, especially the contrasting oni figures, one reassuring and the other threatening. She wants to understand what the images mean but hesitates to ask him. Her interest is therefore at once aesthetic and relational: the designs invite interpretation, while her uncertainty about questioning Jungkook marks the limits of what she yet feels able to say. She later asks her instructor to let her complete an optional assignment on Japanese tattoo art, turning that fascination into further study.

Art beside ordinary comfort

Creative expression in the story is not confined to drawings or formal coursework. Shelby loves older films, and while watching Halloween with Jungkook, she knows the movie well yet still reacts to its frightening moments. He watches her expressions as much as the film, noticing her enthusiasm and the pleasure she takes in it. The scene makes art a shared everyday experience: what matters is not only the film itself, but the attention the two give to each other while watching it.

Music becomes more directly consoling when Shelby is crying in the university dormitory. Jungkook strokes her back and sings Fix You. His singing calms her, and she settles against him. The moment also calls back to his mother, who used to sing to comfort him. A song thus carries care across two experiences: Jungkook draws on a remembered form of comfort and offers it to Shelby, while the physical closeness and music answer distress without demanding an immediate explanation. The scene presents comfort as something enacted through voice, touch, and memory together.

Expression, memory, and renewal

The story places these creative and intimate forms of expression alongside Shelby’s efforts to speak directly about painful experience. After the hurt caused by what Cassiopée Smith said, Dorcas Peters finds Shelby on the university rooftop and apologizes for her friend’s words. Shelby rejects the apology on Cassiopée’s behalf; Dorcas insists that Shelby should not have been spoken to that way. Elsewhere, Connor Barnum tells his daughter that she can tell him anything, and Dorcas promises to remain present through both difficult and joyful times. These are not artistic acts, but they clarify the wider pattern: expression may come through an image or a song, or through another person making it safer to speak.

Memory, too, acquires a personal setting and a small ritual. At Santa Monica State Beach, a childhood memory shows six-year-old Shelby running on the sand, falling, and being gathered up by Sara Barnum. Connor lifts Shelby onto his shoulders, and she plays with his long hair while her parents look toward an abandoned house. Years later, Shelby visits her mother’s grave with Jungkook. She brings white tulips, sits beside him, and cries as she looks at the inscription bearing Sara’s name and dates. She has told Jungkook what has happened during the time she could not visit; he then addresses Sara’s grave and promises to stay beside Shelby. The scene makes remembrance an act of communication across absence, carried by a place, flowers, and the presence of someone willing to listen.

The book’s closing reflection describes renewal as a gradual process: people may need months or years, may proceed alone or with support, and do not have to move forward perfectly. That ending gives the creative scenes their larger resonance without claiming that art resolves Shelby’s pain. The drawing can disclose sadness, a joint project can open a path toward connection, and a song can provide immediate comfort; each offers a way to encounter feeling at a particular pace. Art’s significance lies in that modest but recurring capacity to make experience perceptible and shareable while healing remains unfinished.