Being With

Mixed media (fabric, paper, mirror, acrylic) on canvas and wood, dimensions 120x67cm. In ‘being-with’ I explore what it means in therapy to be with the participant/client living with the impact of childhood trauma. How trauma can mean a person becomes off-centred in their life, can feel disconnected from themselves, from their frame. How this often brings the person into therapy. How glimpses of childhood trauma can be seen behind the fabric of their lives. How gently and sensitively I be with what I see through the fabric. How we sit together with this trauma, no longer hidden. How as we work together, wounded hearts become scarred gold, how knowing this, guides me as therapist. How my being meets the participant/client. How as the artwork moves into this public space, each viewer is t/here in the image, in this shared social story of childhood trauma and its impact. I’ve made art since I was a child but until the mid-1990s I didn’t see myself as an artist or even an art-maker. In my 2003 PhD “Daughters of Persephone: legacies of maternal ‘madness’”, I used art-based research methods with participants – including myself, and this changed my self-identification as an artist. Today, I make art to understand and explore personal, social, political and ecological issues, and the ways in which these are interconnected