Kerryn Knight is an Art Therapist, Sandplay Therapist, Registered Counsellor, Supervisor, and founder of Kindred Art Space – a specialist Mental Health Centre. Kerryn and her Centre can be found in Frankston, on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula.
What are the benefits of Empowered Art Therapy?
In private practice since 2008, Kerryn empowers you to gain clarity and make positive changes in a creative and culturally appropriate manner. Kerryn achieves this through specialist art therapy and psycho-spiritual processes for your mental health and wellbeing.
Her creative, nurturing approach empowers you to gain a different perspective on issues to make meaning and find solutions. The emphasis is on the process and not an artistic outcome. As a result, Kerryn empowers you to draw out clarity to work through blocks, make meaning, and find solutions. Kerryn supports individuals, Community Groups, Teams, Small Business and Organisations.
Three Schools of Formal Training
“As an Art Therapist & Supervisor, in private practice since 2008, I bring my life experience coupled with three schools of formal training into the work I do. These schools include the Transpersonal, Sandplay Therapy and MIECAT’s Form of companioned inquiry and all have changed my life.!”
Despite Kerryn’s formal training it is her lived experience that has provided her with much knowledge about life issues. Because of this experience, Kerryn finds that people warm to her ability to establish rapport and build trust in the safe and nurturing space she creates and provides for You.
Founded on her belief in the power of Art Therapy, Kerryn opened Kindred Art Space, Frankston in 2016. Kerryn facilitates her workshops and individual sessions from this unique and nurturing Centre for Mental Health and is joined by other independent specialists who also provide psychology, psychotherapy, sandplay therapy and art therapy.
“As an Art Therapist & Supervisor, in private practice since 2008, I bring my life experience coupled with three schools of formal training. These schools include the Transpersonal, Sandplay Therapy and MIECAT’s Form of companioned inquiry and all have changed my life.!”
What is Transpersonal?
The Transpersonal focuses on that which extends beyond (trans) the personal or individual in order to look at the broader aspects of our lives. This psycho-spiritual aspect of my work includes my respectful integration of ritual and ceremony, influenced by Indigenous culture, to embrace the powerful benefits of rite-of-passage for all ages to embrace life transitions.
The Transpersonal work I have engaged in throughout my own life has helped me navigate very painful experiences in order to transform them into meaningful life purpose. I am now humbled by the ability to share and therefore pay it forward to my clients to support them navigate their life challenges and transitions.
How does the MIEACT form of companioned inquiry work?
The companioned inquiry process invites openness and curiosity to the therapeutic relationship I offer my clients. Through these values, together with myself as companion and you as the inquirer, we walk together on a journey in a landscape of safety at your pace to see what emerges and unfolds within the creative, experiential and expressive processes I facilitate.
This process provides structure that brings the mind and body together in a grounding and transformative platform for positive and lasting change. Through this form of inquiry, I have been able to rise above patterns that no longer serve me on my ongoing journey of transformation.
How does Art Therapy help my Mental Health?
Art Therapy focusses on the process of creating rather than an art outcome. Therefore, it is not about creating a ‘masterpiece’, nor it is creating something that is aesthetically pleasing. Rather it is just about the process of expressing emotion and doing so by becoming more aware of our body felt sense and the wisdom it holds.
The art created has a two-fold effect. On one hand it acts as a release of emotion. On the other hand, the art acts as a visual representation of that emotion of which the art-maker can dialogue with and gain further understanding of.
More and more research points to how we store emotion and traumatic experience, at a cellular level. In his work on trauma research, Van der Kolk (2018) speaks of how “the body keeps the score” (p. 86).
This storing of events is often only re-traumatised through speaking about them, whereas with creative, expressive interventions, a person can re-frame their experience. Sometimes the trauma took place pre-language and therefore there are no words to describe the emotions felt.
The representation of body felt sense and re-framing of experience helps people to externalise the issue, look at it from different perspectives, dialogue with it and do so in a safe contained process at a pace that is led by them. Therefore, the creative process acts as a vehicle for navigating issues and gain understanding from a deeper and wise part of self. With deeper understanding, solutions can be created for empowered change.
Will Kerryn Interpret my Art?
As part of her ongoing professional development, Kerryn does have a basis in interpreting art on varying levels. As a result of this understanding Kerryn knows exactly what key questions to ask of you. This empowers you to find meaning rather than just relying on you being given advice. The meaning, personal associations and feelings of the artwork is always held by you.
Kerryn companions you on your journey of further self-discovery in a safe and nurturing space. As a result Kerryn helps you unlock your power to find your answers. Just as each art piece is one of a kind, the attached meanings to them are highly individual, very powerful and hold the potential to create deep and long lasting change for the better.
Kerryn Empowers You to find Your key. !
Kerryn is committed to providing individualised sessions, workshops, and programs to empower people and groups to reach their goals.
