Response art in art therapy practice and research with a focus on reflect piece imagery

ABSTRACT

This ‘practice innovation’ paper provides an overview of the development of ‘response art’ which is growing as an integral part of routine clinical practice in art therapy. I provide a literature review of the use of art therapist generated images made before, during and following clinical work. There is a particular focus on post-therapy ‘reflect piece’ imagery which is the subject of the research described in this paper. The purpose of the research is to examine practitioners experience when using art immediately following a session, and how making art in this context, may facilitate the discharge and release of powerful or complex affects and part-processed feelings aroused during their clinical work. Secondly, how developing the themes, gestures and visual motifs systematically between sessions may deepen empathy and attunement, and thirdly, how both forms of visual expression may contribute to the supervisory process.

Plain-language summary

Response art refers to the visual, creative, art-based responses made by art therapists as part of clinical practice. The generic term is ‘clinical art-making’ and refers to art made in response to any client-related experience, work-based dynamic material or experiences deriving from the clinical context.

The term ‘reflect piece imagery’ is used to describe the artworks therapists make immediately following an art therapy session and is the focus of this paper. The potency and clinical usefulness of this form of response art has led to an art-based research project which I have been leading over the past two years. The second part of this paper presents examples from the research and draws together the findings from this and previous research to form an evidence-base from which practice methods and further research in this area can be developed.

The literature review traces the emergence of the use of clinical art-making in art therapy practice in North America and Britain and refers to the definition, contexts and application of therapist generated artworks. The current research design described is art-based and demonstrates the use of visual research methods (McNiff, 1998, 2013, 2018) which may also be of interest to the reader as well as contributing to the practitioner-researcher paradigm.

KEYWORDS:

• Response art
• clinical art
• empathic art
• reflect piece imagery
• self-care
• supervision

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the therapists at the London Art Therapy Centre for their support and participation in the first phase of this research project, the on-going support for reflection and critical thinking provided by my supervisor Dave Rogers, and the professional support and clinical guidance given by the Centre Director Hephzibah Kaplan. All images used in this article are taken from the research process and belong to the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Gary Nash Dip AT, MAAT trained in 1989 and 1995 at both Goldsmiths’ and St Albans. He has developed a private practice since 1995 alongside his work in social services, the voluntary sector and mainstream education. Gary co-founded the London Art Therapy Centre in 2009, where he is Art Therapist Practitioner- Researcher providing individual and group art therapy and delivering professional workshops and training for creative arts therapists. He is research lead in the area of response art and audio image recording, two projects which he established in 2015.

ORCID

Gary Nash http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4313-6082

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.