72 • Introduction to Art Therapy
Although materials are an essential component of our work, they have not been dis-
cussed by many authors, perhaps because we take them for granted. Edith Kramer noted
the properties of different media in her 1979 book, to which Laurie Wilson (G) also
contributed a section called “Pre-Art Materials.” There was a brief chapter called “Art
Materials” in Arthur Robbins’s (H) first book (1980), and Helen Landgarten (I) (19 81)
described work with a resistant adult, focusing on her rationale for choosing both the
media and the tasks. The “task analysis” approach can also be helpful in media selection
(Wilkinson & Heater, 1979).
Knowing the Creative Process
Understanding and being able to facilitate a genuinely creative process are also parts of every
art therapist’s armamentarium (J). While there are many individual differences in how each
worker goes about accomplishing this, all agree on its importance. Like being familiar with
media and tools, this is one of the ways in which art therapists differ significantly from other
clinicians who use art materials in their work. Facilitation sometimes involves teaching—
often of techniques, always of ways to express the self authentically (Figure 4.2). As with
knowing media, personal experience of the artistic process is critical in helping others to
achieve the altered state of consciousness required for creating.
Equally central in effective art therapy is knowing how to observe another’s creative pro-
cess acutely, sensitively, and nonintrusively (K). Becoming aware of all of the temporal, spa-
tial, and other nonverbal aspects of people’s behavior with materials takes time and practice
(Figure 4.3). It is a major component of training because the more an art therapist can see,
the more she can figure out, and the more effectively she can intervene to help. As Robert
Ault (L) once said, a picture may be “worth a thousand words,” but “to observe the making
of a picture is worth ten thousand words.”
Figure 4.2 The art therapist as teacher—Gladys Agell.