AP Eco-Art. Connecting Circles of Care.
CATA/ACAT Journal Cover Art. Gratitude Eco-Art and Reflections. 2025.
Excited to share that my eco-art was selected as cover art for an issue of the Canadian Art Therapy Journal in 2025.
I created the above Circle-of-Care nature mandala a few days after returning from Thunder Bay, where I attended the Canadian Art Therapy Conference, Navigating Together, Creating Inclusive Spaces: Celebrating Change Through Art Therapy(2024). This mandala emerged as a quiet process of integration—an opportunity to reflect on connection, care, and the collective spirit that shaped the conference.
In this post, I share a few reflections and selected quotes from the bio statement that accompanied my cover artwork.
As I settled back into my life here, I found myself landing in a place of gratitude and privilege — having been able to attend, co-present, and experience such a rich and generous sharing of knowledge and wisdom by my peers (and in such a beautiful setting). I felt called to pause — to honour a moment of gratitude for the experience and to reflect on all that I had witnessed, learned, and shared.
“Tapping into my felt-sense, I reflected upon our gathering in community to co-learn, create and share stories and wisdom from a place of allyship, inclusion and care.”
I find that creating outside in a nature setting softly invites presence, grounding, reflection and renewal within the moment. Regardless of the day I am having, the anticipatory grief that lingers, or the stressors that loom quietly in the background, my mood begins to shift the moment I settle into my nature art practice. In that space, something softens. The noise of worry fades as my attention turns outward—to the presence of flowers and leaves, the forms and textures of a garden-scape transforming, the colours and light that surrounds me - and all of the qentle rhythms of the natural world.
“My meditative ecological-art practice (that includes hundreds of nature creations) has encouraged me to be more responsive and less reactive to experiences of loss and trauma through gentle gestures of connection to self and others. In my daily practice I share, witness and reflect upon grief, hardship, gratitude and/or complex celebrations...”
“My multi-sensory process allows me to honour the sources of care I feel in my holding environment, both individually and with my art therapy peers, students and clients. Honouring nature and indigenous ways of being, through knowledge of mindful harvesting, and active witnessing of time-based change and transformations impact my spirit in visual hands-on research. ”
I have been bringing nature-based art into my practice as an art therapist for many years. For a decade, art and nature were woven together in a creative program co-facilitated by Jenny McSpadden and I (Art & Horticultural Therapy. A Creative Collaboration). Through this work, I have witnessed how engaging with natural and familiar materials can spark engagement and foster meaningful participation. Many older residents become active contributors, buoyed by the sensory stimulation, meaningful familiarity, and intentionally designed nature-based invitations — physical, cognitive, and language barriers notwithstanding.
“Through familiar and tangible grounding materials that nurture their interests, their choice, their capabilities, body memories and reminiscence; all engage sensory processes that bypass deficits and help to retrieve strengths. I aim to support caring co-regulation, while centering nature with respect as complex subject, object and source.”
♡ I am landing in such a place of gratitude that my eco-art was shared in the journal, and the gentle nudge from Susan to be involved in the conference, to attend and present at a time when my life was incredibly intense and emotionally draining (and to submit art for the journal). A friend recently stated that for her “2024 was MAJOR?!”… I agree. Full stop (2023 through 2025 was MAJOR! ). However, always amazing moments and connections along the way!! And to share my eco-art like this with the Canadian art therapy community and now here… truly amazing!
“This special issue opens with and is grounded by a meditative, multimedia eco-art therapy piece, Connecting Circles of Care (Penny, 2025). Aligned with the theme of this issue, Penny’s artist statement and artwork embody how attuned, relational, mindful, and land-based approaches foster inclusive and transformative change in art therapy. In her practice, Penny witnesses and shares experiences of “grief, hardship, gratitude and/or complex celebrations.” Throughout the conference, she gifted small postcard photographs and nature-based mandala artworks to those who moved and inspired her. Beniston and Penny’s workshop, illustrated in Figure 5, further documents creative approaches to col- lective healing.”
♡ Sharing and “gifting back” ideas and resources through my website brings me great joy (as those of you who I have taught and supervised know), and it’s my hope that the creative nature prompts—some of which are sampled below—serve that very purpose, if they encourage exploration and mindful moments for you!
✿ PROMPTS-NATURE ART 〰 Exploring Nature as Object & Backdrop. Creative Prompt. + Nature Corsage-Boutonnière. + Heart Art - Creative Inspiration + Autumn Rhythms, Co-Creation, Time and Transformation + Autumn Photo-Triptychs - Creative Prompt
✿ INSPIRATION ECO-ART 〰 Connecting Circles + Nature Corsage-Boutonnière. + Nature & Urban Studios. Exploring Identity.
✿ INSPIRATION NATURE IMAGES 〰 Inspiration Photos for Art Making
✿ INSPIRATION-SPRING 〰 Spring Moments & Eco-Art in My Garden. 2022. + Noticing. Spring, Sunlight and Shadows.
✿ INSPIRATION-SUMMER 〰 Sharing Summer Skies
✿ INSPIRATION-AUTUMN 〰 Golden Autumn Moments in My Garden Sanctuary. + Golden Sunflowers. Golden Moments.
✿ INSPIRATION-WINTER 〰 Crisp Winter Moments & Frosted Outlines. + Winter Moments. Silence and Stillness.
♡ HEARTS 〰 Heart Art - Creative Inspiration + Expressive Heart-Art. + Gratitude Hearts. Formed and Found.
Woven throughout this post are some developing banner images, created with the hope that someday I’ll be able to fully showcase—through a photographic display—some of the hundreds of nature-inspired pieces I’ve had the privilege to create, each one part of a powerful journey of hope, growth, and discovery.
✿ Mandala History * it is incredibly important to honour and reference the cultural origins of the images and approaches we use.
