See Beautiful Grant Applicant: Paint Love

The feature below is brought to you by Paint Love, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. 

To learn more about Paint Love, please visit their website page: here.

It's not just art.

Paint Love works with young people across the Metro Atlanta area who are in the midst of facing some unimaginably tough circumstances. Our programs help them not only see beautiful in the art they create, and experience beautiful in the process of creation, but also acknowledge the beautiful in themselves and in those around them, and create more beautiful in their communities.

Paint Love’s mission is to bring extraordinary arts programming to youth facing poverty and trauma. We envision a world where all young people have access to creative expression that empowers them to imagine a future not limited by adverse experiences.

One way our programs are unique is that each of our projects is intentional and individualized. Projects can last from 1-100 hours and are custom crafted to engage youth in seeing, experiencing, acknowledging, and creating beautiful in the ways that will best serve their unique circumstances.

Another way Paint Love’s programming is unique is that our projects are trauma-informed. This is a new, buzzy phrase, but to us, it means maintaining a deeper understanding of all the ways experiencing trauma can impact kids, their behavior, development, and even creativity. It means meeting kids where they are and inviting them into the creative process so they can have a positive, fun, and meaningful experience. We have a Paint Love staff person as well as a lead artist and extra volunteers at every project, and we strive to provide our team of both staff and volunteers with knowledge and training to set them up for success when working with kids who have experienced trauma.

To try to get across this depth, we sometimes say, “it’s not just art…” Art is important and wonderful all on its own, but Paint Love is not just an after-school art program- we go so far beyond that. Our team is built of top-tier artists, makers, and creators; community advocates; and trauma professionals; who expertly craft projects specific to the needs of each of our partners.

I think the soul of our mission is best conveyed by sharing a story:  One of our partner nonprofits, Kate’s Club, empowers children facing life after the death of a parent or sibling. They do not charge families and provide a safe place for kids to express and manage grief. To go along with their recent theme “If my tears could talk,” a Paint Love artist who is also a professional sculpture and master’s in social work candidate, collaborated with Paint Love and Kate’s Club leadership to create a project helping kids identify their emotions and think about how their grief expresses itself: is it small and quiet like a mouse? Does it roar like a lion, get angry like a rhinoceros, or snap like a crocodile?

Kids used air-dry clay and shiny, sparkly gold and silver spray paint to create elaborate, beautiful animal masks to give their grief a voice and a beautiful, physical representation.

This is just one example of how we are investing in the creative and mental health of the kids we serve. By bringing extraordinary arts programming to youth facing poverty and trauma, Paint Love’s projects are creating opportunities to experience all the ways art and the lessons it brings can make our lives more beautiful and more meaningful, and sharing that beauty with the kids who need it most in our community.

Written by: Laura Shaw

Executive Director, Paint Love