Pull Yourself Together: Let's change the stigma around mental health toget...

Pull Yourself Together: Let's change the stigma around mental health toget...: I was told a story the other day by one of my friends and was saddened and shocked to hear it. One of the doctors she had been shadowin...

Ending's here 2014

This blog will finish here - it's the place that will continue to hold art work and writings I made between 2008-2014. 

Please have a look around this blog as I think it gives a good idea about the sort of artwork I make. I like it!

Over the next year I will post bits from this blog to my new website. For more information about me and what I am currently working on please visit:

https://www.saskianeary.com

  Saskia Neary Art Therapy

New beginnings - but not much feeling like it...

Happy Christmas all 2013

Around at home right now...

 

 

 

Crunching up charcoal

Crunching up charcoal, making rough forms, painting back over and rubbing out has become part of my process. Figures emerge as shadows of people who have left their mark. I am reminded of patients on the ward; intensely present for only short periods of time. Some figures take shape as 'the image' others fall to the background; struggling to claim space to be seen, to hold my attention. Impermanence and pain are captured in the entwined lines and shapes invoking my realisation and feelings of grief about the tragic inevitability; for many patients I have been working with, repeat admissions to the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit will punctuate the rest of their lives.

saskianeary@yahoo.com

and finally... difficult to bare

While making this figure I had in mind the painful experience of giving birth. Training to be an art psychotherapist has been a difficult labour and at times seemed too much to bare. Babies pour fourth as overwhelming feelings and anxieties - my own and those of clients. Unexpressed thoughts and intensely private experiences become at once public. Not all can be nurtured - there are far too many. The struggle to hold and let go, to speak and remain silent is ongoing. Developing compassion towards myself and others brings to the fore the importance of taking care of myself as an art therapist in order to sustain my practice into the future.

My final placement was in a hospital for 'sick children' where I offered art therapy to children and their families. Chronic illness evokes deep fears and psychological distress which cannot be hidden. Raw vulnerability and fear of exposure have been wrapped into the body of this little figure. Finding the courage to express and share these anxieties has only been possible with support from many others.

in the beginning...

my body my own

remembering some of the many difficult moments

My bruise

Giving birth was marginally easier

Left with a vacuum inside and a strange hunger how is it possible to make sense of all that has happened?

broken body but still here

holding a space; containing myself in a jar

making stuff for christmas

Lots of hearts this year. I never get bored of making hearts and I like having them around me. I guess it keeps me in touch with human emotion and reminds me how important love, passion and creativity are in my life. At the moment compassion is also a bit of a theme and my hearts remind me to extend compassion to myself and others...I have many people in mind as I make them and am reminded of the importance of nurturing strong relationships in our lives that sustain us. Happy Xmas!

lady in my fire

I made this figure a while ago and recently I found her buried in the fireplace. I am not sure how she got there but she reminded me of the victorian shoe we found as kids bricked into the fireplace in Saxtead. I imagine it was for good luck or superstition and was intended to keep the house safe and to ward of bad spirits. This is how I think about my figure and her baby bringing creativity to our home and holding a warm and precious space.

in the shadows of my mind

please get up and dance with me

in retreat

bridge to the inside