Layered Landscapes.

Community Creating and Connecting
A 2018 Art and Art Therapy Story

My initial ‘Layered Landscape’ sketch was created at the Ontario Art Therapy Association’s AGM and Art Retreat in 2018, and later used as cover art for an edition of the OATA Tapestry Newsletter.

During the opening presentation in 2018 attendees were given basic art materials (a single graphite pencil and a piece of paper) to enable us to experience a simpler process and embody the early days of art therapy interventions. From that creative doodling prompt and my immersion into the sketching process for most of the day, came the graphite layered landscape shared above (top left).

The AGM was a wonderful day of community, creativity, connection and learning. The setting, speakers, and enjoyable company provided us, as art therapists and creative souls, a supportive space to relax and learn, and the time and place for playful and explorative doodling.

In 2019 along with a series of giveaway gifts for the OATA AGM and conference event, I donated a ‘version 2’ of the layered-landscape sketch for their auction raffle. Although selecting art for someone else’s space can be so personal and hard to gift, I felt that the connection to the previous year’s art therapy directive might just resonate with another fellow art therapist.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, this exercise would later prompt a series of layered-landscape variations in 2020, where needed mindful art-making rituals and soothing creative practice (the inner-scape) intersected with the uncertain and worrisome looming external landscape of the global pandemic.

Art Notes

‘Layered Landscapes’ can be filled with layers of images, colours, words or just marks … they are a creative way to capture the ‘layers of your thoughts’.

Landscape colouring-templates can be downloaded here.

Additional layered landscape templates will be provided in a future Creative Prompt post on my Blog.