Interested in Art Therapy & Response Artwork?: Understanding the Clinical Process
What is Response Artwork?
Art Therapy is not limited to solely the rich experience of a client creating artwork in a session. Often a clinician specializing in Art Therapy will engage in the process of creating Response Artwork to express their knowledge of the client and gain a deeper understanding of their therapeutic alliance. This process enriches the therapeutic bond and allows the therapist to navigate treatment in a way that is tailor made to the clients needs.
How does Response Artwork work?
Response Artwork is the process of a clinician creating a Post Session Spontaneous Gesture. This is a moment where the clinician will create their own artwork as quickly as possible following the session to express their experience of the client. The purpose of creating artwork spontaneously and as soon as possible following the session is so that the clinician can observe their artwork in a way that demonstrates an authentic unconscious and emotional expression, rather than a planned piece of artwork. Following this the therapist can analyze their artwork to reveal a more thorough sense of the client’s emotional experience to allow them to plan their next steps in therapy.
Tips for Creative Arts Therapists creating Response Artwork:
Don’t be afraid to make “bad” artwork. The same way we hold space for feelings that are difficult or “messy” we can honor holding space for whatever comes up in our artwork to allow us to best understand the way both ourselves and our clients are feeling.
Set a timer for 5 minutes or even 2 minutes (or plan to create something to the length of one song)… Sometimes our greatest insights creatively and emotionally arise when we have less time to plan as we are forced to lean more deeply into how we feel.
Spend time analyzing your artwork. What themes are arising? How do colors or shapes symbolize or reflect your emotional experience?
Most significantly Response Artwork is a process that suggests the mutual bond between the therapist and client as it is a chance for the therapist to explore their experience in the therapeutic space. When the therapist and client are attuned to each other, Response Artwork is often a reflection of how both the art therapist and client are responding to one another as the client continues to grow and expand.
At Repose, we honor and value the influence of the therapeutic alliance on clinical outcomes. Thus, we encourage all of our clinicians to engage in continued supervision, training, and discussion of their client experiences to ensure that any and all obstacles to clinical success, conscious or unconscious, are identified and addressed.
Are you a client interested in Experiential Therapy? Click here to learn more about Art Therapy, and Dance Movement Therapy. Click here to learn more about other Experiential therapies offered at Repose.
Meet our experiential therapist here: Noelani Rodriguez