1. How did you become an art therapist? What made you decide to take this course?

I was able to combine three things that I felt very early on in my life in my profession as an art therapist: 

• my love of artistic work; 

• the desire to be able to help people in various needs; 

• to be able to focus more on the individual than I did during my initial teacher training.

2. What do you enjoy most about your job?

What I like best is that I can show the young people I work with how to find solutions in a different way/through different senses than we are used to in our everyday lives. Through artistic activity, they gain completely different access to their emotional life, to their physical problems – and accordingly also to new approaches to solutions and possibilities for improvement. After completing our programme, it is not uncommon for my patients to take up a creative hobby that they have discovered thanks to art therapy.

3. How long have you been active in the Foundation’s projects?

Previously an art therapist since 2004, in your programme since 2022. 

4. How would you describe your work?

My work is very diverse and multi-faceted. Not just every day, but every hour is different – it requires sensitivity and the willingness to engage anew with each person/patient at every hour and to filter out together what is currently most beneficial. Sometimes this is through relaxing sounds, other times through activity, and sometimes words are important. In any case, the work always feels creative to me – and meaningful, as I can help people to find new courage to face life and discover new paths through creativity.

5. Which artist would you like to dine with and why? 

With Friedensreich Hundertwasser. He was an incredibly versatile and courageous artist – who not only left his mark on the art world, but also created completely new architectural ideas, was committed to environmental protection – and saw life as a “total work of art”. In this way, he not only designed “art for beauty”, but also wanted people to feel closer to nature again, for organic forms to give them a sense of well-being – and for living, life and art to be as individual as people themselves are.

6. What did you want to be when you were little? 

My career aspirations were not clear or well-defined. What I knew early on, however, was that my professional activity had to have something to do with people and human interaction, that health was important to me, and that it had to involve artistic activity – so I found my way to art therapy very soon, just one year after completing my initial training.

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