Annie Robinson | Professional Art Therapist
Art Therapy: Artmaking for Healing, Connection, & Social Justice
Annie is a certified art therapist and a member of the Canadian Art Therapy Association. Her practice is trauma-informed and values cultural safety.
Art therapy is new to many, yet intuitively we can understand that artmaking gets at something deeper than conversation using only words. This is particularly useful when working with trauma stories and folks who have not responded to talk therapy or traditional counseling.
Just as in her personal art practice, Annie pulls natural and found materials into the art therapy experience as much as possible. That can look like working outside or bringing natural materials into the studio space.
Annie seeks to help people get unstuck and grow in connection to themselves, their community, and their environment. This looks like working with folks who could identify with the following issues: anxiety, stress, depression, mental health struggles, addiction, trauma history, creative blocks, and burnout.
Current Offerings
Colour Wolf: Art Therapy Group
Named after a game Annie plays with her daughter, in Colour Wolf we will embrace the spirit of play and healing through artmaking. This group is for self-identified women, trans, Two Spirit and/or non-binary folks looking for connection, ways of processing grief and rage, and exploring creative ritual. Many different mediums will be explored: scribble drawing, painting, collage, natural and found materials, etc.
No art skills necessary (this is therapy, not fine art!)
6-week group, 1.5 hr sessions (in person, maximum of 8 participants)
$200, all supplies included
Starting April 2nd or 4th, meeting every Tuesday or Thursday at 7pm at the qathet Art Centre (studio space) above the library.
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is using both talking and art-making to take a journey together. There is the therapist, the client or group, and the art, all in collaboration and exploration. Often, we let the art lead the way. With simple art materials, clients can explore problems, gain self-awareness, and grow an aptitude for self-soothing amidst whatever stressors they are experiencing.
Read on to learn more about my art therapy practice and how I am serving the community. If you’re ready to reach out, please contact me here.
“Art making is my way of bringing soul back into my life. Soul is the place where the messiness of life is tolerated, where feelings animate the narration of life, where story exists. Soul is the place where I am replenished and can experience both gardens and graveyards. Art is my way of knowing who I am.”
My Approach: Connection to Story & Place
Humans love story and art is a language we use to connect and tell our own stories. This practice has been used for thousands of years to express interconnectedness and attach ourselves to those who came before. We long to root ourselves into the groundedness of knowing our story and share the health and security that grows from sharing that story with others.
We are interconnected like the rhizomatic network, working together to flourish.
I am currently working with folks one-on-one and with groups, using the following principles:
A Place of Safety
My first focus as an art therapist is facilitating safety for my client. As the first step in a therapeutic experience, safety can be quick for some and for others can take more time. Some folks feel safe as soon as they’re making art, while others take weeks to dive into the art materials. There’s lots we can do to create safety: make artwork together, take it slow, ask questions without pressure to answer, and give lots of space for things to unfold in good time.
“I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.”
Natural Materials
Being outside and engaging with natural materials can disarm us in a safe way; often conversation flows and progresses quite quickly in this type of making experience.
I use natural materials and work outside as much as possible. This looks like mandalas on the beach, group weavings and making paint using foraged color sources.
Trauma & The Body
My work is trauma informed and embraces the science behind memory storage in our body; therefore connection to our bodies is a pathway toward healing and what Bessel van der Kolk describes as being “fully, sensually alive.”
Art-making that engages the body can create a threshold not easily found through talking. The most beautiful and important work of an art therapist is facilitating the safe walking through this liminal space and into a truly transformative experience for the client.
Defining Health: An Ethic of Care, Attitudes of Wildness & Wonder
It is the nature of humans to live in harmony with the planet and each other; health and repair can spring from this desire. This is the spirit of my art therapy practice: personal story flowing into social justice. That flow is energized by my personal art practice and connection to the land. Where did we come from? How can we connect with each other and the land? In harmony with this flow, I use earth-friendly materials and practice outside as much as possible. So many folks are in survival mode because of systemic oppression, mental illness, trauma, and the stress of our over-wired society.
“If we pay attention, we realize our current way of life in the industrial growth society of the West is not sustainable and that grief and unease are a normal response to an unsustainable way of living. Stories of ecophilosophy suggest epistemologies of intimacy grounded in the senses and the sacred. These stories call us to awaken from denial and disconnection and to transform grief and anger into action. This is a call for an ethic of care and character to embrace attitudes of wildness and wonder.”
I ask myself if an attitude of wildness and wonder is possible for my clients who are struggling with addiction or new moms with fussy babies and no partners to give them a break, or anyone who is generally in survival mode. Despite the struggles, I have experienced glimpses of this wildness and wonder: a person on the edge of homelessness adding beads to a community weaving, a new mama pouring paint onto a canvas while her two-month-old slept in a nearby stroller, a young student getting lost in her drawing of an elephant. These are moments of aliveness; art therapy strives to extend those moments into the more mundane or stressful moments of a client’s life.
Conciliation: Working as a Guest
I live and work on the territory of the Tla’amin People. As someone with settler heritage I am a guest here; I share this to state my role in an evolving story of this place I get to call home. This story is an undercurrent of my art therapy practice and experience of this coastline that holds both a history of colonization and an example of collective healing. My practice seeks to continue anti-colonial work and hopes to be a part of unfolding more collective healing.
Connect with me for more info.
If you’re interested in working together, please reach out.