ALIA West

July 2005

Art therapy with Dena Lawrence - Hollywood Private Hospital

On Monday 23 May, Sandra Pulman and Lothar Retzlaff of the Hollywood Private Hospital Library hosted an evening with Dena Lawrence, art therapist. Dena shared with the audience her experiences in India during the boxing day tsunami, and her response to this event using art therapy.

Dena Lawrence is an art therapist specialising in trauma work at the Hollywood Private Hospital Nedlands. She has a Masters degree in art therapy and is a qualified mental health nurse as well as being an accomplished artist. Her main clients are Vietnam veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. Dena also works with clients that have been diagnosed with eating disorders, depression, anxiety and those who have substance use issues. Dena also works in private practice.

Dena is a very spiritual person who tries to take a spiritual retreat every year. Last year in December Dena travelled to India to spend time in the Amritapuri Ashram. The ashram is in a village off the west coast of India. The spiritual leader of the ashram is Amritanandamayi Devi, also known as the 'hugging saint'. Amritanandamayi Devi uses hugs to reach out spiritually to her people and heal them. It was boxing day, 26 December when the tsunami which devastated so much of Sri Lanka and Indonesia hit the ashram. Those in the ashram were relatively safe because of the strength of the buildings, and the people (some 15 000) were evacuated to the roof tops of the ashram and a nearby university. The surrounding villagers were not so lucky and many people lost loved ones and all their possessions. The people of the ashram moved quickly to help the villagers. The ashram poured thousands of dollars into assisting the village people, in the early stages with food, medical equipment, clothes and accommodation. Later assistance was given rebuilding the villages and fishing boats. Much of this money came as donations from western countries to the ashram. Even so, the next few days for Dena were traumatic as she came to terms with the scale of the tsunami's damage and gathered herself to continue her journey until she returned home to Australia.

As an artist and an art therapist, Dena used art making as a way to try to process and make sense of her experiences. Dena showed the audience pictures of the devastation around the ashram, and then shared her artwork which she produced over several months with the audience. It was obvious from the artwork that Dena went through a time of confusion to eventually processing and coming to terms with her experiences. After the presentation there was time for questions, the answers to which have been summarised below.

Art therapy is well regarded in the UK and the US, and is gaining recognition in Australia. People can use art to explore thoughts and feelings that they may not be able to articulate verbally. People will project their own thoughts into their art, using patterns and colours to visually represent feelings and events. The nature of the art will change as the person processes that which is challenging or disturbing them. Art therapy allows spontaneous images to flow onto the page and provides an internal mirror to be explored. Dena's pictures gradually became more formalised and contained, but at different stages reverted to more abstract and diffused forms of colour. The art making explores and allows expression of traumatic feelings and memories, which are then integrated, and some healing may occur.

The major 'healing' within art therapy is the 'doing' or the making of the art image; therefore the completed work need not be shared, although it is normal to share the work with the therapist. Within a workshop environment the artwork may also be shared with other participants, but only if the artist feels they want to. There is no need for the participants to be trained artists or even artistic, as it is the use of colour and pattern that will provide the outlet, rather than formalised pictorial representations.

These pictures are a representation of the work that Dena produced, and shared with the audience.

Refuge, the image I completed when I first arrived back.

Emerging, completed after being back five months.