HIRAETH

  Case Cameo

‘Tanya reflected upon on-going Art Therapy work. She had spent a number of sessions building an image with modelling clay to represent her life and feelings. Tanya said, “It was hard to like focus on how my anger was like working and that … it has helped me loads like dealing with emotions and that.” Tanya created a flower out of modelling clay to symbolise her experiences of Art Therapy. This is how she described her creation:

 “The colour red represents anger (petals), purple is emotions (stamen), pink happiness (stalk), green is the meadow (base) … well it’s like all step-by-step … well you have to have grass first, and then the stalk … and then you have to have the middle bit and then the petals … yeh step-by-step … actually, I’ve actually made the red as … as if it was on the ground … it would actually look like fire probably.” 

The flower appeared to represent Tanya’s difficult Art Therapy journey into her internal emotional state. There is a sense of growth, of understanding layers of feeling. There is also a twist. If the petals, “like fire”, were on the ground a powerful and destructive inverted image materialised. Tanya’s anger (petals, fire) had engulfed her emotions (stamen) and begun to destroy her happiness (stalk), with a potential to even burn her foundations (meadow).’

It can be seen how art materials can allow a projection of inner states where they can be observed, symbolized and understood. Tanya was transforming her social-emotional functioning. She built understanding into a previously miss-understood dysfunctional tendency to act-out her feelings. Tanya went on to use clay to physically move her anger in the moment as she built constructive channels for powerful emotions.