I’m from Toronto. I’m an artist and a psychotherapist.
I stopped drinking and taking drugs at age 25. I also stopped painting at age 25. I became frightened of creating because I had so long associated it with loss of control.
I developed a successful career as a therapist and dabbled in photography, which felt like a safer alternative for me. I needed to be creative but I needed a more controllable medium. I found that in photography.
I came to realize that, through photography, creativity was vital to my ongoing recovery and to my happiness.
I incorporated this philosophy into the psychotherapy that I was offering my clients. However, there was an underlying, unconscious yearning to go back to my painting roots.
I didn’t realize exactly how much I needed to go back to expressing myself artistically through paint again. But once I started, I couldn’t stop.
I was creative in spite of, not because of, the alcohol and drugs. It’s empowering to know that I never did need them to create; that creating is enough. It’s an ‘enough’ experience. And when I do it, I feel like I’m enough.
