Georgia Betteridge

witnessing

Artwork size: 55cm x 90cm

Artwork medium: Mixed media on paper

The key art therapy idea here is ‘witnessing’. The client makes art expressions that are witnessed and contemplated by the therapist and by the client themselves. The art therapist creates a safe place for the client to express, contemplate and attend to their internal and lived experiences.

In the art therapy room, this may look like an adolescent who screws up the paper you give them and says “this is how I feel”, presenting a ball of crumpled, defeated paper for the art therapist’s attention. The art therapist, more often than not, knows how to respond in a therapeutically intentional manner. The art therapist understands that clients, artists and art therapists alike can sublimate their unspeakable truths into bearable forms that are witnessed and can be attended to in some way.

My artwork is a raw image of artistic emotional expression, and a second formulated image, representing my personal experience of being witnessed in art therapy. And of my intention as an art therapist to provide the same safe reflective containment.