Rhizomic Musings: Finding the Unexpected in Art and Healing
Figure 1: Briony Tronson, Layering of Ideas, 10th Feb 2025,
Mixed Media & Digital Collage
“A plant that grows by rhizomes spreads laterally underground, sprouting new plants where chance prompts it, or opportunity allows. A rhizomatic plant lets go of where it came from. It extends indefinitely. Sprawls and breaks the rules. Makes its own rules and doesn’t look back. Diverse and plural, not a voice but voices, it connects and connects some more. Think aspen, orchid, ginger, bamboo. Think poison oak, horsetails, bunch grass. We’re past good and evil here, beautiful and ugly—the rhizome’s where shit gets real.”
—Patton, C. (2015, The Art of Compost)
In many ways, this is how creative processes unfold. Like a rhizome, when we create art it does not necessarily follow a structured or hierarchical path. When we place our hands on materials (whether that be clay, paper, paint, wire, pastels or natural materials) the process expands—guided by our emotions, sensations, memory and intuition—and often in ways we cannot predict. In expressive art therapies, where creativity becomes a means of healing, the rhizome serves as a powerful metaphor: ‘healing is not linear’. It can unfold in waves and ruptures, through connections and disruptions, carried by symbols and stories that surface unexpectedly..
Yet, in Western society, thanks much to Plato and others, we have been conditioned to think in an 'arborescent' (tree-like) way—hierarchical and structured and usually with a beginning and an end. We like to believe there is a certain ‘cosmic order’ to things: a seed sprouts and grows into a tree, each stage predetermined, progressing toward a fixed outcome, replicating its predecessor. We just have to look at how our schools, organisations and even developmental theories are structured. This way of thinking values linearity, stability and predictability. Often, when we have an idea, we think in similar vertical and sequential lines which don’t allow for much flexibility.
In nature, a rhizome in its growth has no set plan, there is no logical pattern—and like an ever-expansive and evolving map (rhizomatic in nature), it is always open to new directions and new connections. In the plant world, a rhizome doesn't start with a seed, and it doesn't have a trunk; it can break/rupture and yet continue to reproduce in a way different from its parent, sprouting out stems/shoots this way and that, creating new pathways and connecting in an endless multitude of ways.
Figure 2: Briony Tronson, “It’s the Most Curious Thing”, 9th Feb 2025,
Closeup - Mixed Media on Paper.
Like a rhizome, creativity can also flourish when it is non-linear, emergent and responsive. When we create art it can move in unexpected directions. It can branch out, rupture and re-form. It allows for multiplicity, divergence and spontaneous connections. In expressive therapies working rhizomatically really means embracing an organic process, allowing the materials as well as our sensations and emotions to guide us through the process. A painting might begin with an intention, yet through the process of creating, it can also evolve into something unforeseen, carrying traces of the unconscious and even perhaps ancestral echoes—pulling us toward new and unexplored spaces and sometimes even whispering us ever forward toward personal transformation.
The concept of the rhizome, explored by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980), speaks to this dynamic in a broader social context and invites us to consider it with regard to our society’s structures. Rhizomatic thinking resists hierarchy and embraces multiplicity. Like a map, it is open-ended and invites new directions. Deleuze and Guattari write:
"A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles."
From my understanding (at its core), rhizomatic thinking challenges the way we construct meaning and invites us to break away from rigid structures and instead embrace the interconnected, ever-evolving nature of ideas, relationships and creative practice.
For me, this way of thinking resonates deeply. When I am creating art, an idea that begins as one thing often shifts and mutates through the process of well, creating. What at first may seem disconnected can sometimes suddenly reveal underlying threads of meaning, or I discover a new way of combining materials together. The experience of allowing myself to create art in this way really aligns with my value of ‘emergence.’ But it is also one of navigation—feeling my way through unknown terrain, responding to my impulses, the materials in my hands and being endlessly open to unexpected encounters. For me, this can be a space where new insights arise—through an unfolding process that allows for emergence, surprise and discovery.
Figure 3: Briony Tronson, “Material Explosion”, 8th December 2024, Photograph of Mixed Materials
I also find that embracing a rhizomatic perspective challenges some of my conditioned ways of thinking about how I relate to myself and others and also how I approach my work as a Creative Arts Therapist. It asks me how I can creatively challenge my conditioned and structured beliefs about the world, and it invites me to resist the pressure of predefined pathways and instead engage with artistic exploration as a living, adaptive process. Recently through my work ‘Seedpod Creative Arts Studio’ I chose to branch out from purely offering professional Arts Therapy services, and I am now also looking to run creative and immersive experiences through “Forge & Well- Creative Wellness” in the shape of workshops and event. How this new branch to my business will evolve I do not know, but I am open to all the possibilities. For surely, good ideas—and meaningful transformation—require flexibility and freedom of imagination to allow them to take root in unexpected places and then invite us to grow and adapt to new situations!
I feel this passage beautifully encapsulates the idea of becoming more rhizomic:
“Our thought has become so tree-like and so binarized that until you think rhizomatically, you can’t see the awesome and weird connections between things you thought were unconnectable. Hell, without the rhizome, you’re stuck in the tree, desperately trying to find pre-determined paths from one idea to another. When you’re in the rhizome, you can swim in the mud and freely jump from idea to idea without following some rigid and annoying branch.”
—Heft, P. (2017, The Rhizome: An American Translation.
Figure 4: Briony Tronson, “Meandering Thoughts”, 25th September, 2022, Alcohol Inks on Yupo Paper
So, if you find yourself stuck in a particular way of thinking, feeling, or creating, perhaps it’s time to embrace a little more of the rhizomatic. Through artistic practice, we can challenge ourselves to move beyond preconceived structures, allowing our imagination and creative process to take new and unexpected forms.
Creativity, like healing, isn’t a straight line—it can move in bursts and loops, meander slowly, get stuck in indecision and then move forward again, sometimes finding unexpected crossings and new previously invisible horizons. Creativity thrives in the spaces between structure and emergence, order and chaos, the known and the unknown.
Perhaps it is in those moments—when we surrender to process rather than outcome—that we may open ourselves to connections we never could have planned. And maybe, in that surrender, we have the potential to discover spaces for healing that we never knew existed.
Art can be a way of leading us there—if only we allow it.
