Art Therapy & Color Therapy

by Ronelle Joubert: Functional Therapist
(Hoedspruit, Limpopo, South Africa)

I am a Functional Therapist based in Hoedspruit, Limpopo, South Africa. I have my own practice from where I see individuals, married couples, dependents, teenagers and children. I also have a satellite campus based at my Therapy Centre from where I train Functional Therapist up to when they want to go for their Masters at the University. I also give workshops on various subjects pertaining to Functional Therapy.

Although I have been using sandtray therapy before in my rooms, I am new to art therapy and joining Creative Counselling 101 am expanding tremendously on what I do within my Centre to give the client the best tool on their road to healing.

Below is my own work and I was amazed at that which I received through the art therapy.

My world is very, very busy and cluttered. That was the first thing I noticed in my picture. I could immediately while painting it realise that I am cluttered and overwhelmed and this is also then very much linked to my sandtray therapy tray I did.

I absolutely adore spring coming out of the terribly dead winter which I cannot stand (I feel dead), going into summer and green lush what I so deeply love.

My blue strips is very much evident of loyalty as I am over the top loyal but in this picture it very much represents my loneliness, sadness. I have placed the 4 red strips on the sides of the blue to tell me that I have courage to see this season through (only assessing my own work do I realise what I did then).

The yellow is to separate my worlds so that I can carry on thinking clearly, giving me some kind of sense in my world. The green represents much growth within me as I am studying quite a bit and growing tremendously.

The red squiggles is going hand in hand with what I have already said earlier, together with the yellow. The black is submission for me. It is the last colour on top of all the other colours and it rounded it off (completed my picture) when I did that.

I felt complete when I added the black squiggles and find it amasing now that it is sort off in a s which is submission. Thinking back when I did the black squiggles, I actually felt relieved that I have completed the chaos that went on in the back. Amasing.

I will certainly continue with art therapy including the rest of the creative ways in creative counseling for a long, long time and know that it will and has benefited my clients and myself.