ABSTRACT
I came to art therapy by a curious route. I originally trained as an art teacher, and taught in Grammar schools to ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level standard, but it became apparent to me that I was far more interested in the ‘Please Miss, I can’t draw’ pupils than the able sixth-formers, who seemed self-sufficient. I began to sort out the ‘can’t draw’ from an expectation of exact replication, and tried to introduce the idea that any mark made was valid, that we all saw things differently and that there were various ways of representing or expressing-that nobody was expected to produce a ‘photograph’! Then I started my family, and gradually came back to work via arts and crafts in Day Centres and Homes for the Elderly or Disabled. I became more interested in problems and special needs, and noticed just how similar was the work of the elderly to that of young children, in clay-work especially. At the same time, I offered myself as a home tutor for my local borough, and moved to a unit
for school-phobic children as ‘art teacher’. On picking up a copy of Inscape one day, I remarked to my boss that I thought I was an ‘art therapist’! She supportively replied: ‘I never thought you were anything else!’ I was still not in a position to do the art therapy training, however, but later in 1980 began to work at Family Tree, a private school for autistic children of potential and intelligence (six children to six teachers and a pair of video technicians-we were on video all the time, for record, review and discussion). I shared teaching and art therapy with the part-time art therapist, under whose encouragement I enrolled at St Albans on the part-time course of two years, one day per week.
