What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is a psychotherapeutic practice that uses creative inquiry and expression —such as drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, and other art forms—as a way to explore emotions, process experiences, and support healing. It is based on the idea that making art can help people to explore and communicate thoughts or feelings that might be difficult to express in words.
In a therapeutic context art-making becomes a portal: a space to explore, grieve, and imagine beyond what is. Rather than focusing on artistic skill or finished products, art therapy values the process of making as a way of accessing deeper knowledge, self-understanding, and transformation. For many, it is also a tool for resistance and empowerment, offering a space to challenge dominant narratives, reclaim stories, and imagine new possibilities.
Art therapy is a practice of creative liberation from normative restrictive constructs — working to disrupt how white supremist ideologies, the gender binary, heteronormative-patriarchy, ableism, ageism, diet culture/anti-fatness, and all systems of colonialism seek to disconnect, isolate and diminish us in order to extract and generate profit.
Art is a way of remembering otherways. remembering relationships with our bodies, our stories, one another, the land and the more-than-human world. It is a way of resisting the forces that tell us we are made to work, accumulate, and spend and work some more. I believe we are magic! Everyday we are figuring out how to live in systems that were never designed for our flourishing.
Who is this for?
we are all existing under and, in our own ways, often inadvertently upholding systems of oppression. Art is (now and historically) been an avenue for resistance, remembering, reimagining and recovery. My work is divergent affirming – meaning I do not believe there is only one right way to be, to live, to act. My practice is rooted in supporting people to find their way back to themselves not only as an act of individual healing but also as a necessary contribution to collective healing (rejecting individualism and culture of toxic wellness industry).
The folks I imagine working with are those who may not yet found or have had access to what they need in mainstream psycho-therapy settings or other therapeutic practice spaces. People who feel or have felt excluded, gaslight, invisibilized or pathologized within their experiences with health systems / counselling / therapeutic services. People experiencing anxiety, depression, hopelessness, grief, overwhelm, anger/rage, self-loathing, self harm, suicidal thinking, intrusive thoughts, exhaustion… for very good reasons (read: persistent violence / polycrisis / facism / oligarchy) who are looking for a way to keep going.
My work is especially attuned to those navigating
identity, neurodivergence, gender expansiveness
anxiety, grief, rage, sadness
chronic pain/chronic health challenges, disability / changing abilities
call-in/call-out culture, conflict, accountability in relationships / teams
relationship dynamics and transitions (including separation and divorce, polyamory/ethical non monogamy/relational anarchy)
pregnancy (including planning/decision making, loss, abortion)
parenting (including co-parenting, parenting complex/divergent kids/kids experiencing multiple barriers,school anxiety / refusal, homeschooling/unschooling)
being in a fat body
aging, perimenopause, menopause
overwhelm, burnout, exhaustion, freeze (in general as well as specifically connected to employment, family roles or organizing)
the unresolvable tensions of being in relationship with a world in crisis.
I invite imperfection, unlearning and messy transformations – Art is not just a reflective process but an active portal to imagining and enacting more just and liberated ways of being.