My Story
This is a story about a paintbrush, a hospital bed, and what happened after. It's also, in some way, about you.
Art didn't arrive in my life as a calling. It arrived as a lifeline.
A decade ago, I found myself sitting at a table during an art and wellbeing project for people who had experienced trauma and mental health challenges. I was there to support my colleague Roya Pourali, who was leading the session — but she had everything beautifully in hand. So I picked up a paintbrush instead.
What followed was unexpected and completely disarming. I fell in love. Within weeks I had paints and canvases at home, was learning techniques, making mistakes, and discovering that something was flowing through the work that I couldn't entirely explain or take credit for. Each piece felt like it came from somewhere deeper than skill or intention.
When it mattered most
Years later, I faced the most serious test of my life — ten days in ICU, often hovering between crisis and recovery. In the long, uncertain hours of that experience, especially in moments of lucidity, I found my way to YouTube videos of watercolour artists. In particular, Kirsty Rice's joyful, playful approach became a kind of tonic — transporting me somewhere full of light and colour when the world had become very small and very frightening.
When I came home, I painted.
Not because I had to. Not as therapy in any prescribed sense. But because my hands and my heart knew what they needed, and painting was it. That experience confirmed something I had begun to sense earlier: that creativity isn't a luxury or a pastime. It is one of the ways we heal. One of the ways we return to ourselves.
From healing to practice
That understanding is now at the heart of everything I do through Art for Healing.
I work with individuals and groups — particularly those doing difficult, meaningful work in the world — to explore what creativity makes possible. Not art-making as performance or product, but as a way of listening inward, of accessing what lies beyond words, of giving yourself permission to be in flow.
I've seen it happen in peacebuilding spaces, in community groups, in rooms full of people who arrived saying I'm not creative and left having made something that surprised them. Creativity doesn't require talent. It requires willingness.
My own practice continues to grow and deepen. My paintings — watercolours, mostly — feel like they originate from somewhere I can't fully name. That mystery is part of what keeps me coming back.
I don't see creativity as a retreat from the difficulty of the world. I see it — however it bubbles up for you — as one of the most powerful forces we have to imagine and build something better.
What is art?
For me, art is when we…
Listen to the inner voice and follow it
Stop and notice the birdsong, watch the flutter of a butterfly, and let it move us
Have a vision and have a go at making it real
Find ourselves in a flow, and stop noticing the time
Art is whatever you can imagine, and love, that comes from inside you..
