I've been interested in art therapy and therapeutic art for many years now. In 1995 I was sent along to the Crawford College of Art (Cork)'s Art Therapy Summer School. It was amazing. I'd been working on a CE employment scheme, Dublin City Artsquad, and participants were given money to attend some kind of training. Nuala Hayes (NCAD), was the scheme supervisor who thought I would enjoy learning a bit about art therapy, and wow was she right. I couldn't quite believe that this thing called art therapy existed - it seemed to correlate with some ideas that were floating around in my head, but with so much more to it! I was overwhelmed by the experience. I had been trying to teach art and also to work in community settings and support settings such as a women's refuge, where there seemed to be a place for 'doing' some artwork with people, but where the tradition of teaching art didn't quite fit. And now this idea of art as therapy, and also therapeutic art, was shown to me and it seemed to make such sense of the 'place' of artwork for the groups I'd met.
One of the first books I read on the subject was Art as Therapy by Sean McNiff and I still flick through it now, more so as a talisman for remembering the power of that new learning than as a resource these days. A few years later I went on to attend the Certificate in Art Therapy in Crawford, one of the formative experiences of my life I think really, and although for a long time I used the skills learned in my workaday work, now I carry with me into my own arts practice much of the contemplative, explorative, and (although I don't like the phrase, it fits here) stream of conciousness approach that underpins art therapy.
Maybe it shows in my artwork, maybe not, but I think it does really, as below...
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| Mary Cullen, Was that the River?, Oil on Gesso, 18cmx13cm, 2013, €120.00 |
