Published:
December 2020

Issue:
Vol.15, No.1

About the author

  • MA AThR, MA Ed, BFA

    In 2017 Kelly Reedy founded ArtWorks for Wellbeing, Awareness & Learning, a studio-based consultancy combining her interests in art therapy, fine art and education. In the field of art therapy, she has worked with female youth-at-risk, adults experiencing long-term mental illness, as well as created museum-based workshops for children with special needs. She is currently a part-time lecturer in the MA Art Therapy programme at LASALLE College of the Arts. Kelly has exhibited her art internationally in France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Singapore and the US.

This work is published in JoCAT and is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND-4.0 license.

Wound

Kelly Reedy 

Guide me 
In stitching 
Time and again 
An image of wounding 
That will not be mended 
By one hand alone 
Only through joint labor 
Yours and mine 

Kelly Reedy, Wound, 2020, oil pastels and watercolour on paper, 500 x 400mm 

Artist statement 

Through the intimate act of creation, we as artists/therapists muster over and over again the courage to vulnerably probe, in order to repair, the wounds deep inside the soul, both others’ and our own. It is by cultivating our artist identity through response art making that we are better able to understand and empathise with our clients, as well as care for ourselves as clinicians.