The Artist Behind the Arts Therapist

I make stuff, it feels good!
I am productive, it never really stops, and when it does stop I quickly become unhinged.
Other people's needs and life's demands are a convenient excuse - in reality, the demands of my life feed my art work, my confidence, my joy, my sense of playfulness and my determination to create.  This insight came to me as I drew the image above.
If I had more time I'd have to deal with fear, fear of being shit.  I play with fear always, in my art making, but not for long.  I just get on with the doing usually.  With more time I'd have to sit through more challenging processes, more confronting feelings, survive my own negative feedback and my extreme shyness as an artist.  I now have a space and a new industrial sewing machine - I kissed it when I unloaded it.  My studio isn't set up, but I used it today.  I wonder, does it mean that what I make has to be 'good' now?
These words were hard to write - Artist, Studio.
The biggest gift of my Arts Therapy training was realising that the creative process can be horrifying but absolutely worth it - that meeting of self through art.  I learnt to expect to meet fear and shit along the way, to welcome them and be as kind to them as I am to joy and play and wonder.  This makes me a much better Arts Therapist.
The Artist isn't behind the Arts Therapist, they are walking hand in hand.

The Artist behind the Arts Therapist

Fragments of self...there's the inner critic...there's the artist I promised myself I would become, young, naive, making handmade paper in Japan, stirring pulp of Kozo ready to pull a sheet that would later blow across the paddock that I would have to run after to retrieve.

Fragments of my art works in progress or "states" (the first print you make before creating an edition); bits of handmade paper from my university days studying Visual Arts, bits of drawings I've made after my many walks in the bush...collecting data...inquiring into nature...searching for self.

I begin...the frustrated artist, in a box, confined by my limitations, work, parenting and poor health. Wanting, needing knowing I need this. Why has it been so long? Frustrated because my inner critic is well and truly present. This is no good. Why have you kept all these bits and pieces? Shut up and just make, I say.

Trust the process and let go.

The materials guide me. It feels renewing to deconstruct and reconstruct pieces of works in progress I have hoarded - some for over 13 years.

Not finished, but happy where I have arrived. Works in progress.

Space to be the "artist me" for this moment. Finding ways to adapt my practice into my present life...

First artworks made by myself in my studio!

"Engaging in disciplined art making has to do with commitment of time, energy, and attention. The first step to look at how to integrate disciplined art making into a busy and committed life is to try and put aside preconceived notions about what it means to be a disciplined, committed artist". (Hyland Moon, 2002, Studio Art Therapy, p. 62

Fragmented Self, (2017) collage & mixed media: 

watercolour, binder medium, handmade banana paper, recycled paper, 

tissue paper, graphite pencil, silkscreen print, thread

Bindi dog: Willow bank Studio, (2005 - 2017)

drypoint etching, multi plate etching with aquatint, 

handmade banana paper, watercolour, binder medium

Etchings printed at Willow bank Studio, NSW & Australia Print Workshop VIC

Paper made at Southern Cross University NSW

A Moment in my Day

Sometimes there is moment, where just for a very short time, everything is still. A bird sings a beautiful note and you stop and catch it. Trees, plants and flowers seem to breath with you. It is just a moment but oh so so sweet. That evening when your son stresses over homework, the dog is neglected and we forget his meal, you don't have time to wash the school uniform, you didn't buy lunch, you cook a fairly untasty meal and your body aches that you want to go to bed at 5.30pm.....that's when you recall the moment!