ART THERAPY WORKSHOPS

Here is info about online or my in person art therapy workshops.

If you’d like to get updates about these workshops and when I’m running the next series, please email conwayrecoverytherapy@gmail.com.

Free Online Art Therapy Workshops During Covid-19

There are many restrictions during the time of Covid-19. Nevertheless, we can always journey in our imagination, taking inspiration from our capacity for good, the goodness in the world and in nature this time of year, to make something with our hands that is bright, affirming and colourful.

Free Online Art Therapy workshops provide a space during Covid-19 to come together, connect and share our process …….. For each session, I offer a reflection which you are welcome to take as a point of inspiration for you work. Or, you are always welcome to be with whatever is present for you and explore that through the materials.

Easter Art Therapy Workshop

The reflection today was to tune into our own goodness and the goodness in the world around us. Sometimes our goodness is received. Sometimes it isn’t. Similarly, in the world, sometimes we see the beauty around us, sometimes we receive the kindness of those around us. Sometimes we miss it. Today’s session we took time to reflect on this.

Today’s Story in Pictures:

'Palette of Oils' 

It was my first time working with oils which I bought especially for the class. So I started mixing colours on a palette and started exploring them on paper aswell as my brushes capability with transferring it to paper and it's thickness and strokes. 

The picture itself started out to be a sky, sea and beach and then as I grew more comfortable with the oils and just got lost in the music and colours it became something different. I stopped when I felt it became enough. Out of my comfort zone I cherished to create something that didn't exist in my head at the start of the class. It became through the elements of music, colour and movement. 

Making Space

When I sat down to the art, I realised how cramped everything felt. i felt I first had to make an image that gave me space.

Sunset in Quarantine

 I'm calling it "Sunset in Quarantine" because it reminds me of the goodness in ourselves and the world that persists even in these uncertain times. 

My Wild Garden

I think I'm going to keep adding details over the weeks as I notice all the things I see in my garden looking out from my conservatory. It looks different depending on the time of day and the weather and also what my own mood and energy is like at the time that I'm noticing things. I kind of like how I have no plan for how it's going to end up looking ️ a bit like rolling with the punches in these uncertain times

Art Therapy Workshop April 17

Today’s reflection was simply on the subject of listening. Simply to tune into ourselves and to listen, to our body, our heart, our imagination, our mind ….. and to the world around us.

Today’s Story in Pictures:

“Lavender in the Wind"

Lavender has been a really great tool in keeping my mood up on the hard days in quarantine and the painting also symbolises how I feel on those hard days: sort of tossed around by external forces.

Art Therapy Workshop April 25

Today’s reflection was on sensing into the body and nourishing it with our own imagination of colour. As always, the reflections form a point of departure for participants to go wherever they like in their art…..

Here’s today’s story in pictures ……

My piece today is titled 'The Body'. 

This week I have been practicing connecting more with my body, trying to become more in tune with it and also to make peace with some ideas I have about it that come from conditioned thinking. 

I used glitter pens (yay) and wanted to just let go of control and explore shapes and colours without a plan or end goal to see what feelings they brought up for me. I included some shapes and colours that made me feel uncomfortable and also ones that made me feel peaceful and reassured. There is a yogi sitting on a mat with their head bowed. The mat made me think about creating a space to see what can be brought up and worked through. Everything else is more abstract and seems to be floating by, passing through or looming.

There is also a type of disordered netting which I put some colours into that represent thoughts & choices. I was thinking about thought cycles and their connection to  behaviour patterns and started adding more colours, grouping ones that are similar. 

There's is some 'female energy' in the top right corner that seems to be kind of hiding half off the page. I suppose I have been experiencing some existential anxiety over the past few weeks and this week I have been thinking a lot about female energy and my identity as a woman. The spiky things represent the hurt my body experiences from negative self talk and unhelpful energy's I 'hold in my net'. 

After the workshop I felt like I'd had a conversation with my body and touched base with it about some of the things I had been feeling but hadn't put words on :)

What Will This Be?

I found I had quite a bit of restless energy come up in this workshop. It seems everyone found the last week of relative lock-down challenging. I got an impulse to just take a canvas and, using my fingers, to drum white and blue paint over it. It was very satisfying and I feel this will form a background for something in the future … I’m just not sure yet, “what will it be?”!

Snail’s Place

Emilie advised us to keep our eyes peeled for what to draw this week...I saw a snail when putting out the bins during the week and it reminded me of when I was little and used to build houses for snails in my garden out of building bricks ... I used to gather the snail's and put them in their little 'homes'! Of course they never stayed... they weren't on lockdown...a free example of nature. They just went where they wanted to go ❤

Hope

The painting with the waves is called Hope- the pandemic felt like an unstoppable, natural force to me this week and left me feeling slightly powerless. The sun in the corner represents the hope of calm around the corner.

Quarantine

The second picture is called Quarantine Walks and is painted thinking about that hope from the sea painting and the light that still exists in my daily life despite everything that's going on.

Bealtaine Art Therapy Workshop

In this workshop I'm inviting you to connect with nature and particular time of year and the lovely and powerful old Irish festival of Bealtaine as a point of inspiration for the art.

Here's some information about Bealtaine;

La Bealtaine, officially heralded the beginning of the summer, signifying the return of the light. Its name derived from the Old Irish words Bel taine meaning ‘bright fire.’ where Bel means light - the Celtic sun and healer god was Belenus. It is one of the four major Irish Celtic annual festivals along with Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasa.

Old traditions involved lighting fires at sunset on Oíche Bealtaine or May Eve, April 30, Th e main Beltane fire was lit at the Hill of Uisneach in County Westmeath - regarded as the centre of the country and traditionally known as the navel of Ireland. .Prior to the lighting of the main fire, hearth fires were extinguished and cinders and torches from the main bonfire would pass from townland to townland where each community would light their own bonfires. 

Passing between two bonfires was seen as a rite of purification and herds of cattle were driven between two fires in many villages. Members of the community would also pass between the fires and it was considered lucky to do this while the more daring would leap the bonfire to ensure their fertility in the coming year.

On the morning of May 1 many people would rise at dawn to collect flowers and boughs from the mountain ash or rowan tree to hang across doorways or on the outside of the windows of their homes. The usual traditions of hospitality and generosity were turned on their heads as anything taken from the home on May Day could be used for malicious spells against the owner and guests were turned away at the door.

Our Bealtaine Story in Pictures:

Bealtaine

I started painting the sides and top of this little chest of drawers the first week ... i'd left the back blank as I didn't know what to put on it .....so today i painted a fire !! and then underneath green to show the earth.  So the idea for me is that this fire of energy and passion and creativity is always there whether I feel it or not ... and so is the earth!

Brushstrokes

It's called Brushstrokes. Again I'm just exploring oils with movement and colour mixing. Thanks again I really enjoyed the session especially the meditation piece befure we start the art. It's so good and also the group interaction. 

Going with the Flow of the Music

I enjoyed Emilie’s therapy. I felt more calm after that:) I drew some patterns inspired by the Irish culture and its nature.

Bó Bealtaine

The session was particularly cathartic and healing for me. The theme was Bealtaine and we talked of the benefits of having four points on the Celtic calendar that offer a time for reflection, for seeing where we are and where we're going. More than that they invite us to connect with nature, and in doing so, with ourselves. A Bealtaine tradition was to light great fires and run cattle through them. The purifying fires purged all that no longer served and the ashes nourished Mother Earth, thanking her and  making her more fertile.

After some hesitation and not knowing what to draw, I felt drawn to the colour red. The cow, in ancient Ireland, was associated with the goddess as can bbe seen by the names Bru na Boinne and the Boyne in Newgrange. From there I drew an outline of a cow's head, which I felt was like a uterus, the source of female creativity. As I was drawing, this sense of Mother Earth, the divine feminine within me grew. I felt this was a crucial time in my development and that I was birthing new ideas, a new way of being in what has been globally and personally, a time of great upset and change. As I was continued, I was drawn to the colour violet and used that for purifying flame around the cow. As I was drawing, tears streamed down my face and I felt a sense of loss, sadness, necessity and then peace, acceptance, courage. It was a very healing experience. Connecting in with the other group members, I was delighted to see that some of them had similar experiences and connection to their bodies and divine feminine.

 Mother Nature

I didn't have a plan of what I was going to paint coming to the class and just observed what came up for me as I enjoyed the discussion at the begining. We talked about Bealtaine and what it meant to each of us. How it represented the beginning of summer and some of the traditions that were practiced in Irish mythology to celebrate it. One participant shared with us about how cattle were walked between bonfires as a ritual to protect them and encourage growth in crops.

Over the past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about female energy and I began thinking more about it during this workshop. I thought about the forces that drive us and about the things that are visible and invisible to us, the energy that we are aware of and also the forces working under the surface. When I think of the beginning of summer I think of a time when life blossoms and I thought about the earth being mother nature and her core being her womb. 

The colours I used represent chakras. 

To me purple and green represent intuition, spirituality and love and they're being drawn up from the deep layers in the earth to the root chakra (core) where the red colours represent grounding, courage and strength. Above the surface is the blue colours representing the throat chakra, communication and expression.

I also painted some primroses. I laughed to myself as I wondered if there was some meaning behind why I thought of primroses and not another flower because I take evening primrose oil every day. 

The floating colours represent passing thoughts and moving energy's like clouds in the sky. We listened to some traditional Irish music during this workshop and the rythm kind of came out in my brush strokes.

Art Therapy Workshop May 9

Today the art was inspired by reflection on the recent full Scorpio moon and all associated with moon of feminine, water, intuition, cycles.. etc, coming as it did, so soon after the fire and earth energy of Bealtaine.

Natural Balance

My painting represents the contrast of yin and yang, sun and moon, masculine and feminine. The balance and cooperation between the two is clearly visible in nature.

Moments of Peace

Last week was kind of a fuzzy week for me. Things felt a little more meh and it took a little more effort to find the positives and little inspirations in the days.

I didn't have a clear plan of what I wanted to do coming to the workshop. I was fine with that and found that had actually been helpful to me in previous workshops because it felt less controlled and more authentic. At the start of the class I usually had an ahaa moment of inspiration and a burst of creative energy. I didn't feel that way this week but realised after that that was just a story that I was telling myself at the time. It's funny how we can tell ourselves stories like this. The three pictures I drew were actually of moments in my week that brought me a lot of peace and happiness. 

The first picture is the moon reflected in the water along the river Shannon. I live beside a river walk and I always feel charged and inspired when I walk along it. 

The second picture is a peaceful spot where the Shannon splits in two directions. There's a little perch on the bank that I sit on and look out over the water. The spot kind of juts out so when I look down I feel like I'm sitting on the water. It's very peaceful and I often get that burst in your chest full of gratitude kind of feeling. 

The third picture is a yellow rose that's growing in my garden. I live in a rented house and 'suprise' flowers keep popping up that were planted by the landlord. My granny used to have rose bushes in her garden and the smell is the exact same. Shop/florest bought roses don't have the same particular smell and it brought me right back to my early childhood and more memories came along with it. 

Art Therapy Workshop May 16

Today, we focused on our hands

Distorted Perception 

Before the workshop we were chatting about our week and what space we were in. This week my sleep had been quite broken and I've experienced really vivid dreams when I have slept. I've had loads of memories come up for me both at night and during the day. I've experienced them almost like a movie reel playing in my head. Some of these memories have been pleasant and some of them have been upsetting and traumatic.

Before we began creating we were doing a grounding exercise and the colour I was picturing was unmistakably blue. This surprised me because my mind often wanders in these exercises and I think of a few things before I focus on an image or thought. 

We then gave ourselves a hand massage and focused on our hands. We thought about the role our hands play in our daily life, our perception of them and the relationship we have with them. I found myself being filled with so much gratitude for my hands and my arms and all they do for me. I felt a burst of love for them and wanted to give my whole arm a massage with lovely cream to thank them. 

Emilie then asked us to take a sheet of paper and trace around our hand. I noticed myself angling my pencil in to make my hand look slimmer and wondered why I was doing that. The realisation upset me because moments before I had been filled with so much love and gratitude for my hands. I kept tracing my hand from different angles and looked at how different the tracings were. I thought about how none of these pictures represented my actual hand and they were all just perceptions. 

This made me think about some other ideas I had about myself and how they come from the perceptions I choose to 'trace them' from. I also thought about how complex we are in the way that we can believe a couple of things about ourselves at once. 

I coloured my hands in with various shades of blue. Each one represents layers of our subconscious and our core beliefs. I traced the lines of the lower layers back over the top ones because I wanted to show how our deep rooted beliefs etch their way into our conscious minds. The criss crossing lines also made me uncomfortable and I wanted to represent that side of the realisation. The dark background represents our deep subconscious. 

Although these thoughts made me uncomfortable I also found the realisations reassuring. Sometimes I have a notion that I find scary or upsetting but it doesn't mean that any of them are actually true. 

My Hands

I’m calling my piece My Hands because I've been more aware recently of owning my body, especially my hands and also owning what I use them for. Am I using them to harm or live myself?

Art Therapy Workshop May 24

Today we focused on our feet!

My Feet Connection

I enjoyed massaging my feet with cream. I always find whenever I take time to care for my feet, it does relax and ground me. Tracing the outline of my feet, I’m not sure, I think I was stuck by their vulnerability. For their role in my life and their significance, they are quite small! This is the space I take up on the ground, and all of me is stacked above it. When I let my palm rest on the sole of my feet, it feels like the arch links me to my heart. I put more detail into my left foot. I don’t kknow why. Every line I made though, it felt like was tracing the bones and parts of my foot, like I was creating it!

My Feet and my Inner Strength and Stability

In this workshop Emilie invited us to trace around our feet and see what came up for us. When I did it I was struck by the realisation of how much my relationship has changed with my feet throughout my life and how different my feelings are about them now then they were ten years ago. I quite liked looking at the tracing of my feet when I picked my page up. I thought to myself 'awe, there they are'. It occurred to me how drastically different my reaction would have been if I had done this ten or more years ago. When I was a teenager my sisters used to tease me for having long toes. I took it to heart so much that I would never wear flip flops, not even on the beach and never wore open toes shoes on nights out. I'm not sure exactly when I let this go but I felt comforted to know that I had. It felt empowering to know that I had made peace with a piece of my body that used to make me feel shame and sadness.

At the beginning of lockdown I had given myself a nice pedicure because I knew I'd be in bare feet a lot and a cheerful colour on my toes would make me feel good. I realised they desperately needed to be repainted again and the regrowth was all the time we had spent in lockdown. I found myself really focusing on this and decided to colour my grown out shellac in with some glitter and glue that I mixed up and to add shading to my feet with pencil. We had done some grounding exercises at the beginning of the workshop and thought about the massive role our feet play in keeping us grounded and stable. I mused over this as I was working. During the exercise I had found it challenging to connect with the idea of my feet feeling grounded and stable. I often feel a sense of disconnection from things that are happening around me. I feel like I'm in my head a lot and often feel unsteady on my feet because I'm so distracted. This really frustrates me. I traced wiggly lines around me feet and rippling around them to represent this. This wasn't a new realisation and something that I have been working on. I drew a little green ball of energy in the middle of my feet to represent my focus and inner strength & stability. I thought it was important to remind myself of this and give myself credit for the things that I'm working through.

Art Therapy Workshop May 31

And so we say goodbye to May, to all it brought and all we felt and experienced as we look on to the solstice and June.

Hike to the Sunrise

This week we were discussing the approach of the end of May and how it was already half way through summer. I was thinking about a hike I did last year for the summer solstice. It's not until June 20th but it was a highlight of last summer for me and I had planned to have done some exploring of the trails around where I live before lockdown (I moved from Dublin to Limerick at the end of last year). We began the hike at 11pm and walked the Dublin Mountain Way ending at Fairy Castle to watch the sunrise over Dublin Bay. I had never properly observed a sunrise before and I found it to be a really moving experience, particularly after the hours of the pitch black darkness that we had been hiking in all night. I felt like working with paints this week and playing with mixing colours so I painted a snap I took sitting on the grass just before the sun appeared over the horizon.

Forces of May

I’m not sure what to call mine, but I had the idea of trying to bring together the energies or forces of May. It seemed quite a long month when I thought all the way back to Bealtaine, the full Scorpio moon and on to this bank holiday weekend. I used a canvas I had began weeks back when I wasn’t sure what it would be. It felt very natural to use paints and it was very enjoyable - and I felt the ? relief? of trying to put a frame around May

Art Therapy Workshop June 6

In this workshop, we all felt the shock of the recent online videos showing brutality against black people. We all were struggling with feelings of sadness, powerlessness and some shame. We acknowledged our different levels of awareness of racism and discrimination throughout history but what was clear from everyone was the need to learn and understand more in order to do what we can to help and bring change. Loss was also a strong a presence. The art from today’s workshop seemed to express our attempt to acknowledge and integrate these various difficult feeling and processes as well as to make order out of chaos.

Study of Danessa Myricks 

had been looking at the Instagram page of an amazing make up artist named Danessa Myricks who has make up ranges to suit all skin tones & ethnicities. The lighting in her pictures are amazing and the models are beautiful. I had just gotten new sketching pencils and wanted to try them out 

Art Therapy Workshop June 14

Summer Solstice and Ring of Fire Art Therapy Workshop June 21

Today our workshop focused on the solstice, the power of the sun, light and energy to help illuminate our potential in the face of challenges and to receive the energy at this time of year.

Gifts of the Lock-Down

As we cautiously open up life again, I'm running the last free art therapy workshop this Sunday.  Last one for now that is. We've all had to adapt quickly and find new ways and i've been surprised and very pleased by how well these workshops worked online.  I will look at resuming again either online or in person In August /September.

For this Sunday's workshop I suggest to try to find and dwell on the positives from this lock-down experience.  Let's face it, for a variety of reasons for all of us, it has brought challenges, and as we know, it isn't over yet.... but just at this point in time, and for now, let's look for positives, the gifts it is bringing to take us through the summer.  True we may not particularly have chosen those gifts, or the timing of them ... but let's look for the positives. This is the inspiration for our art this Sunday.

Rainbow Wren 

I really enjoyed observing the birds in my garden during lockdown. I made a make shift bird bath for them out of a roasting tin when it was really hot and they loved it! I used colouring pencils to draw a starling. I made her multicoloured because they have feathers kind of like an oil slick (dark with a multicolour sheen). I just felt like adding all the colours this week so had a play using every color with a big box of colouring pencils. I then moved on to drawing some feathers in the colours of a pride flag

Energy

I'm calling this artwork Energy. I think I learned a lot over quarantine about the varying levels and types of energy that are within us and that we go through throughout the day and that each one is powerful and to be celebrated in its own right. The mixture of the earth, water, and sun here represent that for me as they are all so different and yet so needed and so beautiful.