Ekaterina Baskina

I have been forming my identity as an art therapist for the past 5 years from the day I embarked on my study of art therapy. Before I began working on my Masters in art therapy, I was a freelance artist and a special education and art teacher. I feel that those roles, along with the knowledge I acquired in the past years, have helped me shape my art therapy identity today. Being an artist for over 20 years and teaching art to students with disabilities gave me a firsthand look at how art served as a therapeutic outlet and as a method of communication. I started using art as a coping strategy to express my feelings at a young age. I later saw my students do the same. I continued to use it as a method of communication and as a way of expressing my feelings and still do to this day. I believe that experiencing the creative process firsthand and seeing my students do it as well has enhanced my ability to facilitate the artistic process and the use of various art materials with my clients more intuitively.

The final step to this formation was my experience during my one-year internship at Native American Lifelines. Through this internship, I was able to see the role art plays in the healing process of my clients. I was also able to learn to incorporate multi-modal interventions along with art into my practice. As an emerging art therapist, I believe that art plays an integral role in healing. I also believe that mindfulness and meditation are also important tools in an art therapist’s tool kit. Through the utilization of these and other multi-modal tools, I hope to guide my future clients on their journey to healing.

My artwork has always been an integral part of my self-healing journey. Utilizing art throughout this program has facilitated the continuation of this healing process for me and has helped me facilitate the healing process for my internship clients. This program has taught me how to utilize art as a way of processing and communicating my feelings more intentionally. It has also taught me to step away from my roles as a fine artist and a teacher and focus more on the process of art-making rather than the final product, which I think is the focus of art therapy. The artwork I have used for my art show has a recurring theme of transformation and healing that I have undergone as a result of this program.

I believe that part of becoming a competent therapist is being able to face your own traumas and having the courage to heal them. We must heal ourselves before we can heal others. This program encouraged me and gave me a push to open the doors that I have closed and sealed, and to shed light onto things I buried deep inside. And it also gave me the courage and the tools to face those things and to accept myself for who I am. Having undergone self-acceptance and self-healing, I am better equipped to facilitate a similar process for my future clients. I feel that in order to have compassion for the people that you work with, you need to be able to feel what they feel.