Art Therapy

Art making and creative expression have immediate therapeutic value owing to their power to help individuals gain insight, heal, and cope with life's challenges. As a fully trained and qualified art therapist, I am excited to facilitate art making and creative self-expression to help clients grow and heal.
 

In efforts to ease potential anxieties around the art-making process, including working with art-based media, I emphasize that:

• There are no right or wrongs to creative self-expression and, therefore, one’s artwork.

• Art therapy requires no prior artistic experience - stick figures welcome!

• Art therapy is about process, not product.

• Art is for everyone, it doesn't discriminate.

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My clinical approach to working with art is to sensitively acknowledge the subjectivity and relativity of experience embedded in each client's work. Critical to understanding what significance art holds for its creator is witnessing the artwork with respect, curiosity, intelligence, and an open mind. With this, I challenge and invite clients to discover, explore, and realize the therapeutic benefits of art therapy.

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"Art therapy... facilitates greater awareness of thwarted needs, desires, and distresses and provides simultaneously a metaphorical and concrete outlet for expression that promotes a greater emotional vocabulary, both visually and verbally. It is a way to meet clients where the are, in an honouring way."

Michelle L. Dean, ATR-BC