ABSTRACT
This chapter is co-written by an art therapist and a member of the therapeutic art studio, Studio Upstairs. Holding in mind their different roles and perspectives, the authors set out to explore the experience of making art alongside each other in the studio, where it is part of the ethos that art therapists are also practicing artists and make their own artwork in the group. The chapter is based around conversations between the authors and first distils some points about the benefits and problems of this practice in their community setting. Artist identity is found to be a shared place of overlap where shifts in role can happen, contributing to a more flattened hierarchy in the studio between staff and members. The authors then use four of their artworks to look at retrospectively together. In looking together, they discover that the artworks ‘spoke’ to each other both in the studio group and anew in the intersubjective space of their conversation. Here, artworks brought up personal, social, and political points of connection for exploration; gender, feminist thinking, motherhood, and being women artists.
