Dannielle Thomson

Project title: Working with the Cauldron: An Arts-Based Autoethnographic Inquiry. 

Dannielle is an artist, educator, and emerging art therapist whose work is grounded in over two decades of experience in teaching and therapeutic work. Dannielle was drawn to complete the Masters of Mental Health with the specialisation in Art Therapy as a culmination of decades of study, interest and vocational calling. As a life-long learner, Dannielle’s practice is underpinned by a breadth of professional experience, which includes tertiary studies in psychological science, education, anthroposophy, transpersonal art therapy, and occult traditions. Dannielle’s work weaves between the roles of an artist, educator, and therapist and central to this is her belief that creative practice is both a vessel and a catalyst for transformation.  

Dannielle has a deep passion for research, valuing inquiry as a means of expanding knowledge, deepening practice, and contributing to the evolving discourse in art therapy and academia. Her current research, Working with the Cauldron: An Arts-Based Autoethnographic Inquiry, has been both a professional inquiry and a personal journey. The cauldron is central to Dannielle’s research, an archetypal vessel of transformation found in Celtic mythology, Jungian psychology, and alchemical traditions. Drawing on mythic symbolism, autoethnographic reflection, and arts-based research, she explored how creative process’ can hold, stir, and transmute experiences into insights and growth.  Her research explored how the cauldron is a container in which art-based reflexive practice can be integrated and transformed, thus reaffirming that personal artmaking in combination with cultural and spiritual practices can lead to authentic, and embodied professional identities. 

Dannielle worked with textile materials and paint as her primary mediums to expressively respond to the research process. She drew on the tactile, layered qualities of embellished cloth and the fluid, alchemical nature of pigments. Fabrics were threaded, stitched and layered to suggest the weaving of theoretical and practice-based themes. Sequins and beads were used as a reflection and mirroring of epiphanies and sparks of realisation. Her use of paint’s fluidity, allowed for the expression of transmutation and transformation of emotions throughout the research process. The cool tone and limited colour pallet, along with the reoccurring motifs, reflect the inner processes of cyclic liminality in the context of the research. In art and artifact creating, Dannielle experienced an interplay between self-reflection, insight, and examination, throughout the research process.  
 

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