Art therapy combines the creative process and psychotherapy, facilitating self-exploration, growth and understanding. Using imagery, colour and shape as part of this therapeutic process, thoughts and feelings can be expressed more effortlessly and easily at times than using words. This means that art therapy offers a different mode of communicating in therapy than talk therapies and can yield great results.

A colleague of mine explains it this way, “We are first and foremost, therapists, and art is the way in which we communicate”. Art-therapy is all about self-expression, in whatever creative modality this can take. You don’t have to have any skill at artmaking at all - any expression will do. Stick figures, garage-plywood creations, crayon marks, doodles, paintings, drawings, sculpture, any creative expression will facilitate therapeutic change when processed with an art-therapist. 

Art therapy is an integrative mental health and human services profession that enriches the lives of individuals, families and communities through active art-making, creative process, applied psychological theory and human experience within a psychotherapeutic relationship.

Art-therapists have a psychology Masters-degree level of training and have professional training in psychotherapy and counselling techniques. They understand, on an intimate level, how different art materials and relationships affect us on a neurobiological level. 

While the practice is within the scope of and includes clinical practice, the essence of the technique is phenomenological rather than clinical. This means that an art-therapist focusses on helping to support you to find your own guidance, helps you discover insight or shifts in internal perception - rather than providing authoritative explanations.