Arbutus Art Therapy

06/23/2025

I had the opportunity to paint a flower pot at one of my art therapy contracts. ❤️

Residents and staff were invited to paint flower pots, which will be part of a thank you to donors who helped fund a new building for our residents.

05/30/2025

Making faerie wands with a client.

04/22/2025

Doing a body tracing with a young neuro spicy client, and after I traced, and once they filled inside of the tracing, they decided they wanted me to have a turn. So they traced around me. My knees were up, so I turned into a very colourful body with wild hair, floating above two feet.

02/20/2025

Waste not want not. Using scraps of materials my client had used in our session.

I love that art therapy promotes using recycled materials, breathing new life into them. ❤️

01/31/2025

Art I made during a recent session with one of my kiddo clients, following their lead.

01/21/2025

Creating art in my art journal, writing a message to myself.

Taking art made when feeling frustrated and hurt, and transforming it into something pretty, sparkly, with a grounded message I needed.

01/03/2025

This last year has been full. Full of ups and downs, worry and relief, sadness and joy, uncertainty and grounding.

I enjoyed this prolonged break from posting here. It provided me with a feeling of spaciousness while settling into new roles.

Since this past summer, I have been working as an independent contractor at the Victoria Speech and Language Centre, where I get to work with neurodivergent children, teens, and their families. And I am loving it.

My intentions going into this year are to continue giving myself the space I need with social media. So, while I will start posting again, I will only post as often as I truly want to, lifting the pressure of feeling I need to post at regular intervals.

This year, I will likely post plenty of response art and art I create during my client sessions; working with children often results in me creating lots of art! You are also likely to see a bunch of neurodivergent affirming info and other bits and bobs I feel called to share here.

Thank you for holding this space for me to re-group and find my ground.

I wish you all the very best for this new year ahead of us.

Here is a photo dump of some of the art I created these last many months, some pieces were made while I was in a session with a client, others are response art made after sessions, and just for fun, I've thrown in a few images from my creative journalling process.

04/26/2024

12/07/2023

10/24/2023

Be kind to yourself, and give yourself the spaciousness you need.

Here is one example of how I have put this into practice this month.

I have tried over the last few years, taking part of Inktober.

Each time I have participated, I try to do the drawings in order and post. However, I don't typically do more than 2-4 b/c making sure to post consistently caused me anxiety.

This year, I decided to approach Inktober differently, in a way that doesn't trigger my anxiety response.

I created 31 small pieces of paper, each with the number and word from the official Inktober list of prompts. I then went through the pieces of paper and found prompts that I was drawn to. Some days I have done one, some days I did several, and a few days I did none. Now, at October 23rd, I have five drawings left if I choose to complete the drawings within the month.

What shifts might you make that could settle your anxiety response?

09/04/2023

A wee bee on a sunny summer evening 😍

08/21/2023

My office on this hazy West Coast day. ❤️

❤