My Journey into Authentic Creativity through Jungian Art Therapy

I painted the image below back when I was studying art in university. This was before I had found my way to art therapy and Jungian psychology. During art school, I started slowly feeling that the joy I had once felt toward art making had disappeared. I became more focused on aesthetics and external evaluation which made me spiral into both perfectionism and procrastination. 

After graduating, I worked as an illustrator, but I felt stuck. I felt like I had to force creativity out of myself rather than it emerging naturally from within me. Eventually, painting became so frustrating that I didn't want to do it at all. 

It was during that time that I discovered art therapy. During my art therapy studies, I started reconnecting to the inner spark I thought I had lost.

For the first time in years, art wasn't about producing a final product, but a process which connected me to the core of me. I was also able to paint with more ease and confidence.

I noticed my images changing, becoming deeper and more meaningful. I felt they carried a mystery I quite couldn't grasp - important messages from my psyche. 

I had been interested in Jung for a long time but that was the point when I decided to go to Ireland to study in a MA program called Art, Psyche, and the Creative Imagination.  

That was when I really started seeing how the unconscious was guiding me through my images and my dreams - I just had to learn to listen to their language. What opened for me was the vast mystery and potential that lies hidden within the inner realms of the psyche, and which each and every one of us can access through our creative processes, dreams, and imagination.

Today, this is why I do the work that I do, and I'm so grateful for having had the honor to guide hundreds of others to reconnect to their authentic selves through creative expression and dialogue with the unconscious. 

I truly believe there is immense wisdom and creative power within each of us and it would be such a shame to go through life without ever being able to access that.