therapy cuts through
repressed expression

SWIRLS OF red paint splashed
across a canvas. A naked woman
wrapped in a coat of brilliant red
flames. A screeching monkey, a
scarlet devil wielding a pitchfork;
gravestones, tombs, volcanoes,
snakes.

By Evelyn Jacob
News Reporter

These aren't scenes from
Nightmare on Elm Street. They
are tmages of personal
nightmares, of abuse — both
mental and physical — of depri-
vation and death.

They are a few of the pictures
cluttering Lois Woolf’s West
Vancouver office. Row upon row
of manila sheets covered with
paint are stacked one on top of
the other, each telling a different
story of suffering.

Woclf heads the Vancouver Art
Therapy Institute, a learning and
treatment centre. The art was
created by her students and pa-
tients.

From Aug. 6 to 9, some of that
art will be exhibited at City
Square in Vancouver.

Although the medical profession
— primarily physicians — has yet
to embrace art therapy as a legit-
imate medical treatment, there are
roughly 200 art therapists in
Canada helping individuals over-
come, in some cases, severe
trauma. Woolf is one of them.

“I had one child who was
abused at age two. As he began to
trust me, the first signs of abuse
began coming out in his artwork
as rage, of someone who had been

attacked or violated,’’ says Woolf.

“We help our clients express
that rage — it's actually helpful
because it’s safe. In day-to-day
life a child can’t express that kind
of anger or aggression.”

Art therapy works ‘ike this: a
client is given simpl: materials
and, in a non-judgmental en-
vironment, is encouraged to
communicate repressed thoughts
and feelings without the threat of
repercussion.

Art therapists believe that words
often inhibit the expression of
emotions and that art — painting,
drawing or sculpture — allows a
person to relate them by com-
municating symbolically.

Art therapy is used as a
diagnosis tool and a treatment,
but Woolf frowns when the word
‘*cure”’ is mentioned.

“What we’re looking for is a
certain resolution, for the client to
feel less stressed by the conflict,”
she explains.

Although he didn’t use art
therapy, Sigmund Freud pioneered
a similar exploration of the un-
conscious through dreams.

In Canada, Toronto psychiatrist
Dr. Martin Fischer developed the
treatment, opening the first train-
ing program in 1967.

Fischer encouraged Woolf to
establish. an institute in Van-
couver, which she founded in
1982. There are now five institutes
Canada-wide that offer art-
therapy training programs.

Molly, 35, is a first-year student
enrolied at the Vancouver Art
Therapy Institute. Once a week,
she and five other therapists-in-
training paint for an hour. These

works will later be used for group
discussion. The purpose of the ex-
ercise, she explains, is to give
therapists 2 personal under-
standing of how the therapy
works.

“I've had other therapy, but
this is the first one that really
makes me aware of a lot of
childhood trauma,’’ says Molly.
“In art therapy you take your
wn root -~ nobody tells you
what's wrong. There’s no
psychiatrist sitting there telling
yeu, ‘well, you’ve obviously
go...’

“The art therapist investigates
with you, but you can see things
yourself in your art. They are
there to support your beliefs and
validate what you think and feel.
it's much more comfortable than
being pushed. It’s the only true
way of learning and knowing.”’

Woolf says there is no ‘‘typi-
cal’? art-therapy patient. Patients,
or ‘“‘clients,’’ as she refers to
them, range in age and have dif-
ferent reasons for undergoing
therapy.

“IT had one seven-year-old boy
who came to me for a very long
time. I suspected abuse after ex-
amining the first piece he created,
a picture of two roosters — a
daddy and baby — joined
together at their bottoms. In my
opinion, that indicated sexual
abuse. As he continued in therapy
he created a picture of a stickman
and a child. In the first section the
stickman — this child’s father —
is pulling a child’s hair; in the se-
cond, he is slapping the chiid

See Annual page 34

HOLIDAY HOURS

Sun., Aug. 4 12:00-5pm
Nion., Aug. 5

12-5pm

YUN VALLEY
CENTRE

1199 Lynn Valley Road, North Vancouver

Sunday, August 4, 1991 - North Shore News - 33

NEWS photo Mike Wakefield

ART THERAPISTS believe that troubled children, adolescents
and adults can use art to uncover and overcome repressed
thoughts and feelings. Lois Woolf (background) heads the Van-
couver Art Therapy Institute in West Vancouver.

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