In contemporary society psychological problems have become increasingly prominent. Because of its capacity to hold emotions, its openness for inner exploration, and its nonverbal mode of intervention, painting therapy has gradually become an important direction in psychological treatment. Grounded in a phenomenological perspective and focusing on "psychological experience," this paper examines painting therapy’s psychotherapeutic function within the "art—thought dialogue" by tracing the experiential process of "bodily perception — image generation — meaning construction." By integrating phenomenological theories such as Husserl’s "return to the things themselves," Merleau-Ponty’s "embodied cognition," and Heidegger’s "clearing of Being," the paper analyzes three dimensions — "present experience," "the integration of body and art," and "the reconstruction of self-meaning" — and proposes that the essence of painting therapy is to enable individuals to face their inner experiences directly, release suppressed emotions, and rebuild connections with the external world, thereby offering phenomenological-level interpretations and references for the practice and theoretical development of contemporary painting-based rehabilitation.

Yan Zhang. Dialogue between Art and the Psyche: A Phenomenological Perspective on the Psychological Experience of Contemporary Painting Therapy. Frontiers in Art Research (2025), Vol. 7, Issue 7: 45-50. https://doi.org/10.25236/FAR.2025.070707.

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