Georgia Fullerton Episode #12: Dance of Congruence

Exploring her Jamaican roots this multi-disciplinary Artist Georgia Fullerton will astound you in all the unique roles she intersects. Inhabiting and traveling through many positions and perspectives as a visual communicator; Georgia is actively encouraging creativity in a wide range of community members. From women's groups, homeless shelters, youth group, to long term care facilities and local school districts. Enhancing creativity, is also part of the healing journey

Being involved in multiple community groups, art therapy, writing, movement, drama - all ways to encourage creativity in community members. Georgia is sensitive to the relationships and emotions that surround and divide our social constructions. Moving within her abstractions into figurative and sometimes portraiture; Georgia is exploring her creative practice as she navigates her local neighborhood, assisting her neighbors in finding their creative energy. Using her skills to encourage and shape the groups she has networked over the years.

Establishing herself in the Durham region as an Expressive Arts Therapist has led to some interesting and serendipitous encounters that have encouraged and enlightened her way of life. Trauma is always within reach, and from this she unearths the awareness of creative change. It is how you interpret, process, and engage with it creatively is the spark Georgia carries with her. She understands the challenges this path has, and greets them with honesty and overwhelming warmth and compassion.   

Podcast Credits:

Audio Links from https://freemusicarchive.org/
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

Connect with Georgia Fullerton: 

https://www.instagram.com/createmyartstory?igsh=eW0wZ2ZvMXZsZWg3&utm_source=qr

Transcript

(0:04 - 5:30)

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Creatively Thinking Podcast. Join Carolyn Botello as she uncovers the inspirations behind some incredibly creative minds that are orbiting our local communities. Hello, Georgia Fullerton.

Welcome to the show. I'm so happy to meet you, well digitally. You are a Jamaican-Canadian multidisciplinary artist who is an expressive arts therapist, arts educator, and consultant living and working in the Durham region of Ontario, Canada.

Educated at Red Deer College in Alberta and York University in Toronto for visual arts. After experiencing a personal trauma that led you to heal, study, and train as a creative arts therapist at the CREATE Centre for Expressive Arts Therapy and Education Institute in Toronto, this has led you to teach arts-based groups such as creative writing, drama, movement, and visual arts for youth, adults, women's groups, and homeless shelters in collaboration with local school districts and long-term care facilities to provide opportunities for self-expression. Whoa, that was a mouthful.

I like to ask all artists what made them choose this career path? Was it working with your hands, your emotional insights, the act of self-expression, or something else? Well, Carolyn, I'll say thank you for inviting me to speak on your podcast. Well, I do like the first question because choosing a career path, for me, it's undulated. There are some unpredictable things in this pathway.

But if I was just to say in terms of just the arts, I never saw myself doing anything else. And for me, I'm a curious person since I was a little girl. I'm curious about how things look.

I'm attracted to bright colours, to interesting-looking patterns. And so I'm also driven by my emotions. So it's kind of like your question answers all the parts.

So yes, based on what I can do with my hands, the emotionality I feel around exciting imagery, or the thought of arts in its broader sense, like the arts in terms of movement, or voice, or music. Yeah, like the career path for me, I'll say it was initially prompted by just, I had two parents who were very much invested in the arts in that they encouraged me and my siblings to at least explore the arts in all its forms. Well, that's really nice to have that from your from your parents.

You work with gouache as one of your mediums. Can you share with our audience how this came about? What medium do you work with in your community groups? And where do you get your inspiration for the projects you use? Gouache is a new, I guess, rediscovery, because it is one of my mediums. I started out really with drawing, like many artists do, just the foundational aspect of mark making, which is, you know, charcoal, pencil, pen, that kind of thing.

And then, of course, I discovered acrylics from college days, going into university. And when I left post-secondary education, I tended to use a lot more acrylic, but I wasn't using acrylic in its very concentrated form. I used to water it down a lot.

And I use it in a way that looked like watercolor. And I really love the idea of layering. But most recently, using gouache has just been a way to express the abstract work that I do.

I find mediums like acrylic or watercolor and gouache as well. They do really work well in communities, just because I do workshops that are based on, you know, therapeutic arts, and not necessarily with an end product or end image in mind, but an experimentation of how primarily any water-based paints are very unforgiving, right? You can't necessarily control it all the time. And sometimes we need to let go of that control.

(5:30 - 8:46)

So when it comes to using mediums in community groups, many of us are in our heads about our problems and our challenges. And so using gouache or any sort of water-based paint is helpful. And I would say, where do I get my inspiration for these projects? That is a really good question, because nowadays, what do we have? We've got chat GPT, where we can just plug in some information, right? And it spits out a project or a way of approaching a workshop.

But I think, for me, inspiration comes from, first of all, the demographic that I work with. And that varies. I have worked with young people.

Currently, I'm working with Black moms. So these are new mothers. Some of them have two or three children, but it's within a community setting.

And like with anyone in the world, we all face some level of trauma, be it low level or high level, deep or shallow. And aside from paints, one of the products or the mediums that I use is actually clay, because clay is really grounding as a medium. And it helps you to almost metaphorically be closer to earth.

Yeah, I totally understand what you mean. Yeah, there was another artist that I just spoke with, Noi Kurimoto. She deals primarily with clay.

And I suggest you take a listen to her stuff. Because yeah, clay, it just has such a powerful effect on people when they use it. It gets you so in touch with just the earth.

And it's just fire, earth, water. And it's just like, it gets you so in touch with your feelings. It's such a powerful medium.

Yeah. It's yeah, absolutely. It's impactful.

Yeah. Oh, that's good. You've got some other artists who are bringing in those kinds of materials.

It's really effective, especially. Your work has had you intersect some profoundly unique roles as a Black woman, single mother, arts educator, arts therapist. How have these roles impacted or benefited your creative practice? That's a big one, isn't it? What a fulsome question that is.

Yeah, that is, I guess, profoundly unique. Those two words together kind of sum it up, don't they? And, you know, I never really set out to wear all these hats. But, you know, as you go through the journey of life, you do accumulate things that end up being really effective in how you move through the world.

(8:47 - 9:40)

And so for me, you know, I'll always be a Black woman. Yeah, you didn't choose that one. So that wasn't something that I suddenly acquired.

I didn't choose that one. That's part of me. And I love it.

Single mother, you know, that is really also something that I didn't necessarily choose. Well, eventually I chose it, but I didn't envision it. I could tell people sometimes I'm just not a planner.

You know, there's some people who, some women who, oh, by the age of 28, I want to be married, have kids and live in a beautiful community and this, that and the other. I was very much off the cuff as a young woman. I just knew that I wanted to be in the arts.

(9:41 - 15:30)

And so all these other things happened. And I'll say they happened through relationship because I'm becoming an arts educator was because I, you know, nourished and cultivated relationships with other arts professionals and people who I would meet in my community out here. And, you know, they see the work that you do, or they hear what you're interested in, and then opportunities present themselves.

It's like I said, it's such a, it's such a question that, you know, there's, there's a story I could tell for each hat, but the role of art therapist also kind of happened organically. And you heard me talk a little bit about trauma previously and, and that we all face a trauma. Well, becoming a single mother brought on relationships that were toxic for me so much so that I ended up, to make a long story short, I ended up, you know, surrounded by paints, canvases, brushes, and I used them to sort of help me bring my power back as an artist.

And I realized in that moment how much I had a different relationship with these materials. And I guess I asked myself the question, how could I use this art making to help heal me and, and heal others? And that led to a pathway that I'm sure we'll talk about later. But they've all definitely benefited me.

Most recently, the arts educator and being able to have the opportunity to work as, as a college professor and working with 20 somethings, 18, 19 year olds, it's hugely benefited my practice because you see the need for a studio practice and you question with these students, well, what do you do to prepare yourself to do the work? Yeah, it's, it's, I wouldn't, your work in the community sounds extremely rewarding, but also I'm presuming somewhat challenging as well. Can you share with our audience what your experience has been like in providing these services for the public? What have been your long and short term successes? Wow. Yeah.

I, I, you know, that's a really good question too, because sometimes you don't even know what you're going to come up against. You don't know what you're going to encounter. Right.

And, and that goes for all of these things. As a black woman, you're going to encounter certain things and how does it match and align with you being an artist? And how are you, how are you viewed? I feel like for me, my experience has been one of continual learning and that learning comes through again, relationship and what, what externally I, I notice I'm witness to and how does it impact me internally? And I guess that's, that's where I can kind of determine what has been rewarding and what has been like challenging in a not great way. But I think, you know, when I think about myself as someone who's been in the arts for over 30 plus years, the title of leader never naturally came to me until the last couple of years.

But when I see how folks like, for example, watch me on social media and see what I put out, I'm always embarking on a new project or public artwork. And I really, I really love how people embrace the work that I do and encourage me. When I think about taking off the arts educator hat and, or even the practicing artist hat that I wear all the time, but I tilt it to the side a bit just so I can sit as a counselor and a therapist.

That in itself, I realized back in 2023, I had to leave the clinic that I was working out of. I was doing counseling and expressive arts therapy because it got to a point where I really felt responsible for these individuals lives. And, you know, you are sitting and witnessing people talking about extreme traumatic experiences and how much invalidation they got from family members.

And, you know, I would have, you know, 10 year olds who were cutting themselves. So you get the extremes, right? Of people who are struggling and suffering. And you're absorbing all of this and you're figuring out how do I continue to show myself self-compassion when I'm sort of being here and trying to help these people find a healing pathway for themselves.

(15:30 - 15:48)

So those challenges were real. I worked in the clinical setting from 2020, just when COVID hit. And it was crazy because there was a huge need for people looking for therapists at the time.

(15:48 - 16:21)

You can imagine the mental health and the situations of people finding themselves in at home when they're typically, you know, out at work, they don't have to deal with their addictive parent or, you know, all these things that were going on. So from 2020 to 2023, I was in the clinical setting and it really opened my eyes to how impactful what I bring is. And I think that experience helped me to solidify what I wanted to do in the long term then.

(16:21 - 17:07)

And so 2023, I left the clinic and another door opened and I ended up teaching at Durham College, which I'm still here now, but in a different capacity, not in a therapeutic way, but in an instructional way where I'm teaching studio practice and second year painting. And in that regard, you know, the mental health issues were still prevalent with students. And so I realized, wow, I can kind of marry these two pieces of experience and really create a beneficial long term career for myself and find a way to really be in community.

(17:07 - 18:39)

There's so much stresses going around, especially when the pandemic hit. And just so many sort of inter-family conflicts and disputes and relations, like just the relationships that are really, I don't know, just there's so much stress there with the pandemic and then just all the other issues that are happening inside those families. And just, I can just imagine what a burden that would be for somebody in your sort of in that setting in the clinic where you just it's all these people sort of unloading on you and you're just you're taking that in and you're taking that home almost to see how to see like it's in your head and it's in your body and you're like, how can I untangle this and make them better? Or just, you know, like you just want to help.

Like, it's just I just think that's kind of normal for everybody to want to help others. So I just can totally understand why you wanted to shift your focus to more of like the college instructor sort of position where it's where you're not bombarded with all that emotion, right? It's more like you're in a practical sort of structure and setup where it's just it's not quite as emotional. You would think.

(18:41 - 20:16)

Not quite as, you're absolutely right. But again, I mean, challenges still exist, right? Just have a different nature in the post-secondary world and with students. But yeah, it really feels different.

The weight, the weight sits on you differently depending on the environment that you're in. Absolutely. Being an abstract expressionist painter, how did this influence you in obtaining a recent Scotiabank Arena Commission? Can you elaborate on this for our audience? Also, what were you meaning when you were quoted as saying you made history with this event? Okay, well.

And we'll be right back. But it was also, but no, if I think about it, the Scotiabank Arena one was also a history. Yeah.

No, you know what I thought? And, you know, because we, yes, we review some of these questions and, but I'm thinking that, I'm wondering if you're thinking about the Royal Ontario Museum event, because I know that was a history-making event. But it was also, but no, if I think about it, the Scotiabank Arena one was also a history-making event. And I'll tell you why.

(20:17 - 21:02)

I'll start with that first of all, because the Toronto Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Corporation were, they of course are in charge of the Scotiabank Arena. They have the Raptors, they have the Maple Leafs, they have Live Nation concerts. And for the first time, Scotiabank Arena was developing or having curated a permanent art collection, public art collection.

And so that's what this was. And it just so happened that I had a friend, I had just left the clinic, and I had a friend, an acquaintance really, who I met when my daughter was very young. They were both in the same basketball camp.

(21:02 - 22:03)

And she happened to see the link, the artist call for this Scotiabank call out for original art. And she sent me the link. And I thought, huh, okay, I just finished at the clinic, I need another job.

This is before I got the college opportunity. And so I answered the call, and I submitted my work and a little write up. And lo and behold, I get a call from Tracy Speca Ventura.

She's owner of a company in the States that was asked to curate this by the Toronto Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Corp. And she contacted me and we had a little interview and she was super thrilled. She goes, Oh my gosh, your work is amazing.

And because I have a history in volleyball as a college volleyball athlete, York University athlete, and I was always had my feet in two different worlds. I was either an artsy fartsy or a jock. I was actually kind of both.

(22:04 - 22:17)

Right. And so I had all of that in my submission, and she was quite enticed. And so, lo and behold, I did get chosen to do the one and only fan piece in the collection.

(22:17 - 24:49)

The collection has over, I think it's 70 plus works of art. And I believe there's 34 artists who got chosen, they made a publication, there was a wonderful VIP event. It was a challenge because I said, I've been doing abstract art for such a long time.

And how am I going to do this, this fan piece. But I ended up pulling out my old print days, I worked in print production for years, so I ended up using Photoshop. And really, you had to use the photographs that were provided by the Toronto Maple Leafs photographers that they commissioned.

And I had to use their work and get it approved. And it was a whole summer of me in my garage. And my daughter bringing me tea and food and while I painted for hours and hours, it ended up being over 250 hours of work and 22 portraits overall.

But I'm coming from a place where in the past, I did do portraits and figurative work. So it was nice to kind of challenge myself. And I said, I'm not quitting, this is going to be up in Scotiabank arena.

And, and it definitely is today. Yeah. Wow, you face the challenge.

Wow, that's that is, that is really impressive. Especially as you said, you you hadn't been doing portraiture for for quite some time. So but it was in your in your past.

So it's just like you just had to go find it in there, right? This may seem obscure. But one I like to ask artists in your practice, what would you say is your main focus when creating? Is it line, form, color, or a combination of these elements? Or is it more complicated than this? Oh, complicated, I guess. Well, you know, I it's, it's interesting, because I guess we depending on who's asking the question, um, you might want to know about line and form and those elements of art and design.

(24:50 - 27:40)

But for me, I would say, you know, what I focus on, especially if I'm doing abstract work, work intuitively, so I don't have a plan when I go in. And more than line form or color, sometimes that happens later. Sometimes the initial motivation or entering in happens because I might have met someone that day that said something to me that really filtered through me in a way or I may have had an emotional experience that left me feeling either elevated or depleted.

And, and sometimes that's what leads me into the work. But when I'm actually focusing on creating, I might be almost in what we call in expressive arts, liminal space. Some people might call it being in the zone.

So I'm, I'm more in the flow. Yeah, or in the flow. Exactly.

The flow. Yeah, it's a thing. It's a so I would, I would really say it's a combination of things because I love to sort of expand on an emotion, or a meeting up or sometimes like this morning, I'll tell you one thing that I did, I'll soon be taking some studies.

And I was in Indigo. And I can't remember looking for a book called spirituality. I didn't find the book.

But when I came out, there was a woman who just came out of her vehicle. And her hair was this beautiful salt and pepper, mostly salt. And she saw me and she says, Oh my gosh, I love your hair.

I said, I was gonna say the same thing. And we ended up talking about hair for a little while. And then she said, Well, you know, I want to just give you this in case you're interested.

There's a wonderful website. And she was a person who was promoting her own spirituality and religion. So she gave me this pamphlet on on her religious practice.

And like, it's just those sort of serendipitous things sometimes that stay with me through the day. And I might go home and paint an abstract piece based on that, or a little study. So it could be line form color, but it could also be relationship, emotion, texture, circumstance, experience, right? A combination.

(27:41 - 37:37)

Yeah, there's so many other layers to that can happen. Think of all those, all those other, other influences that can, that can lead you to create. That's it, leading you to create.

I like that. While researching you, I discovered you work with archival ink markers. What is your ultimate goal with using this medium? Is it longevity, creating work that becomes archival in a historical context or something else? This is a such a rich question from a simple thing like ink markers, right? But I like it because I have discovered in the last, maybe I would say two or three years, my interest in research and researching so much artists, but things that in history, sometimes it's about researching the etymology of a word.

But in this case, I'm kind of sort of bulking it all together under the understanding that history is important. What we leave behind legacy, those things are really important. And never being one to really care about, Oh, am I using the right archival ink or acid free paper? Or, you know, I never really paid too close attention to that.

But I suppose when you're in an instructional position where you're teaching young artists how to preserve their work, it becomes that much more important, right? And so for me, the ink markers, again, I go in because I just like how they look with the work. It's just happens to be a bonus that they allow the work to remain as vibrant as it originally started out. And so, yeah, I guess there is some addition to legacy around why I'm using what I'm using.

And this has been probably one of the best things about being an artist, which is that your work and your approach can evolve and change and shift and go back. And that's what I really like. I wouldn't want to remain stagnant and not have the opportunity to discover new mediums like markers.

Yeah, there's so many different markers out there now. And well, with the onset also of this animation and different ways of of expressing moving pictures, that is also a big push for all the new products that are out there now. Absolutely.

Where do you find you are most comfortable creatively? Is this in the role of the teacher, the exhibitor, or while engaging and encouraging creativity in the community? Was this something you learned during your education in the arts? Another great question. And it happens to be something I've been weighing up over the last well, since 2023, when I started teaching, you know, becoming faculty. And I think if I didn't have the experience of being in different environments, like one in which I'm playing the role of counselor or therapist versus, you know, professor, teacher, in my studio, just as a hermit, being the artist and hiding out.

There's kind of a love in all three of those spaces. But I think if I were to put it in at this stage of my life and my career, if I were to put it in order of preference, and most comfort, in my studio, I'm most comfortable, I don't need to be validated, I don't need to prove anything, I just need to be. And, and then next to that, I would say in community, because that's where I see the most positive change and transformation, not only in how I commune with others, but in what they take away from what I have to offer.

I've seen individuals and I think about my own community in the Black community, I think about how much trauma and post traumatic trauma and intergenerational patterns and curses have come to the surface, because people are now paying attention to mental illness and mental health, and finally, and ways of healing that have been around forever. And not just in the Indigenous culture, but in the Afrocentric culture, it's worth paying attention to all sides, right? And so, I think about my little piece of it, and there's so much more for me to learn or to reach back forward, that I think where I want to be most comfortable is in community and to engage with community in a more spiritual way. I call it that because, you know, I think religion, as far and wide as that goes, has placed a lot of suffering on peoples.

And I think when I consider the spirituality that I need in my life now, I think that's what is the next stage for me in comfortability, in community, in creativity that I bring to community. And even as someone who identifies, as I do, as a Black woman mother, there's a huge piece there that I want to bring, and have those mothers be comfortable among each other, so that they can uplift and support one another. So, what I learned in my art life is that change can start with just one person.

And so, change can be something as simple as making folks aware of how huge the impact of the arts is in your own healing, in your own self-actualization also. Can I interrupt you for a second? Because you keep focusing, or you're mostly focusing on what people are taking, but I think you also have to remember what you are providing and what you are giving in the community yourself. Because, I mean, I think from what you've been saying, it sounds like, like, yeah, there's so much that's happening in these sort of community spaces, and it's kind of creating an additional weight to the practice that you're bringing to them.

But you also have to remember how, sort of, what you are giving back to this community. Like, I know it's, like, you're thinking of it in complex terms, which is understandable, but there's, you have to remember that you are also giving a lot back. Reminder, because I, like I said at the beginning, there's things that I embrace, or I, with, or identify myself with.

This playing small, this, this not seeing the huge impact for what it is. And so, that's a good, that's a good thing you just brought up. It's true.

I am, and, and you know what, sometimes humility isn't always attractive. Sometimes you have to blow your horn and, you know, let your light shine. And that's, that's the place that gifts are given.

So, yeah, I, I'll take all of that. I'll take all of that. And I think that being an artist, you're also probably really just critical of yourself and just, and that gifts are given.

So, yeah, I, I'll take all of that. I'll take all of that. Like, that's what you're not thinking of how you're benefiting the, sort of, the groups that you're, that you're involved with, is that you're just, you're being critical.

(37:37 - 39:15)

You're just, you're thinking in that space and in those relationships, and you're just, you're consumed by all of it, that you're, you're not realizing what you're giving back to these, to these, these groups, right? I could totally, totally understand that, because it's just, I could, I would totally be overwhelmed by it myself, but. It's a lot, but you're right. It's, it is about value, and that's, that is what, that's exactly what I bring.

I'm, I'm not, you know, people will say to me, you know, I don't think you realize how, how connected you are when you step into a room, how, how connected you are when you step into a room, how people are drawn by your light, and your natural, authentic self, and I think it's, I'm in the season where I've, I've earned all of it. I know I'm in the season where I've earned all of it, and yeah, ready to kind of shout it out there, and let the world know that, yeah, I value myself, and you know, small acts are quiet, right? But I think the big acts are what I allow the world to show me. I don't necessarily have to shout it out, but, and nor do I need the validation now.

(39:15 - 41:21)

I think maybe as a younger artist, perhaps I needed more of that encouragement or validation that, yeah, yeah, you can do this, or you're worthy, you're worthy. Now I sit in that place of worthiness, and I thank you for letting me speak my voice, speak my mind in regards to that. You're absolutely right.

The gifts are, are huge. You indicated on your Instagram that you haven't done portraiture work in nearly a decade when you worked on the Scotiabank Arena Commission. Do you see yourself entering back into this subject matter, or are you content to continue with abstract expressionism? Yeah, that's, that's, that's been part of the transition that my work, and direction that my work, I, you know, when I talk about the duality of being, you know, in sports and in the arts, and now in the arts and in mental health, there's always some duality going on.

And several years ago, I kind of made the conscious decision that I'd like to try to fuse both of these styles. And as a matter of fact, on a small body of work right now, that is not only abstraction, but I'm integrating collage work in there, as well as a little bit of, it's not portraiture, but I would say it's figurative work. So a bit of non-representational and a bit of representational.

And we'll be right back. So a bit of non-representational and a bit of representational work. It's, I love abstraction because I think it's so wonderful to have people view it and interpret their own meaning from it.

(41:21 - 44:56)

It really speaks to also what I do in the therapeutic space, people finding their own meaning. But I also love how collage work can tell a different story. And they really do work well together.

So I'm seeing in an upcoming exhibition, I'm having what that's going to look like. So I appreciate the question. It's nice to see when sort of styles can blend or become something else.

You may have already answered this, but can you share how you became involved with the Ontario Expressive Arts Therapy Association? Because you went to school for this position. Was it the direction you knew you would take when you first began as an artist? And have you traveled with their international affiliates? Well, traveled, I guess, in a way, I have traveled through my life experience. So back in 2010, I met my own traumatic experience.

One that, first of all, put me in hospital. Second of all, as I was speaking on, you know, everybody meets their own trauma, I ended up back in the matrimonial home of my then husband. And by the way, he wasn't the one who put me in this traumatic situation.

I had left the marriage and came back. I wasn't sure if you wanted to talk about this or not. Yeah, I'm telling my story now.

So, and I have in particular groups, I have, and I think that it's important to be able to be transparent at this point in my life. And I think people always want to know the backstory, you know, to how did you get from here to there? And really, if we think about the therapeutic arts and just therapy, it's important that people hear some of the details of what individuals have gone through. So for me, as I said, I was back in the matrimonial home, I was in the spare room, surrounded by paints, canvases, brushes.

And when I emerged from that room, what emerged with me were three or four paintings that ended up exhibiting at the Royal Ontario Museum. And that also was a history making exhibition, the largest group of Caribbean artists, Caribbean Canadian artists to exhibit in a major venue at that time. And, you know, from that experience, I realized that art was going to serve in different ways for me other than just making walls look pretty and putting them up in galleries.

And so through different relationships, I formed after that traumatic experience, trying to get my power back, I met a couple of individuals who had studied at the CREATE Institute. And at that time, it was called Isis Canada. And so nobody remembers the Greek goddess Isis, but I do.

(44:57 - 49:15)

She collected the bones, the bones of Osiris. I remember that. That's it.

So you're, you're a creative, so you would know. But at the time, of course, it was controversial to have that name. They've had the name for 25 years.

It's a private college in Toronto. I studied the expressive arts therapy training program for three years. And it was in that time that I discovered all these other resources that I had.

Oh, Georgie, you've got this voice you can use, you can move. And because it was all modalities of the arts, it was just what I needed as part of my healing. And you know, healing is a journey, it continues on.

And as I always say, trauma is always within reach. It just takes, you know, a song, a person talking about their experience, a particular environment, a scent that could actually bring back on that trauma, right. And so I got involved in the community of expressive arts therapy, I began to develop my own practicums.

And because I was in Durham region and not in Toronto, I had to develop my own within this area. And so I got to know, you know, school boards, community organizations, youth groups, women's shelters, and I did the work. I continued doing that and brought it online during COVID.

And of course, you know, the expressive arts community is far and wide. You've got the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, in which I did offer them a workshop and did some online stuff with them. And it's just been now just a part of my makeup to include all the work that I've done and just continue on.

I found out that I really have a skill in this stuff. And I'm able to make transformations and have people realize that they have magical and amazing resources within. And my ability to help them unearth those resources is what has kept me in this field.

And I continue to expand on, you know, what I know already and just learn more every time I meet up with others. I'm going to add one thing to this too. Have I traveled with their international affiliates? Well, I haven't traveled necessarily, unless you call virtual workshops, traveling, but I have done work.

Yeah, in that regard. And then as people hear about me or attend a webinar or whatever, I invariably get asked to come and speak to this or that. Last month, I spoke with the Markham group of artists.

And these are artists who have their own collective and they exhibit and so on. But I spoke as an art therapist and a lot of people who came up to me and said, Oh my gosh, I do sensory work with art or I work with felt and it's so therapeutic. And, you know, it's until you open your mouth and talk about it, sometimes people are not expressing and sharing.

So that's what's wonderful about traveling around and bringing this to others. Yeah, you're showing them all the resources that you have, and then it just helps them share what they have in themselves. That's right.

That's so true. Are you involved with the Dreaming Us Forward conference? Was this partially created by yourself or was it a team effort? How do community members ultimately benefit from joining these groups? Wonderful. Dreaming Us Forward conference was dreamed up.

I have a couple of colleagues again from the expressive arts community. One is Susan Doerter. She is a counselor at McMaster University and is also an expressive arts therapist and registered psychotherapist.

(49:15 - 58:51)

I happened to meet her along with another associate, Terry Robertson, from the community and we wanted to come up with educational guidelines for practitioners who wanted to open their own expressive arts therapy school. And so we sat on sort of our own committee along with the founder of the Wheat Institute, which is the Winnipeg holistic expressive arts therapy school in Winnipeg. And as we sat together online and talked about the different guidelines that we could create and we began to create that, the Wheat Institute was having their 10th year anniversary and so myself and my two colleagues from Toronto, we decided that we were going to fly to Winnipeg and we did that and took part in the 10th anniversary.

And during that time, we talked about the first time ever that we can have a multifaceted conference of expressive arts. So we were including the Canadian Art Therapy Association, the Wheat Institute and the Ontario Expressive Arts Therapy Association. And my involvement was really, I was just there for the initial brainstorming of the idea and I was asked to design some graphics to go along with it.

So if you're online and you happen to be looking it up and you Google Dreaming Us Forward Conference and you see some very abstracted, colourful, watercoloury looking stuff, that's my contribution. So if you're online and you happen to be looking it up and Google Dreaming Us Forward Conference and you see some very abstracted, colourful, watercoloury looking stuff, that's my contribution. Well, you can look out for it.

It's great because it's been a long time coming that they have a conference that involves a lot of the people who've been doing the work in Canada and internationally. And in answer to, you know, how do community members benefit from joining these groups? Well, I'll tell you what, and I'm thinking about younger people, even at the college level, there are students who they love the fine arts, they're painting, they're drawing, they're doing digital work. And some of them, yeah, they might be interested in exhibiting their work in a gallery or maybe training to become a curator or studying, you know, curatorial studies, things like that.

But I do often get students saying, well, what else can I do? Even parents saying, well, what else can you do? Art is like, you can't make a living from art. I think that's very wrong. I think we're in the best time ever in the history of the world for creatives.

And so art therapy and expressive arts therapy are other pathways that young people can actually think about developing what they already have. And you don't have to be a practicing artist to train as an art therapist or an expressive arts therapist. It just seems to be a natural progression for someone who already has, you know, an affinity towards the art and actually think about developing what they already have.

And you don't have to be a practicing artist to train as an art therapist or an expressive arts therapist. It just seems to be a natural progression for someone who already has discover other creative ways of living your life, other practices that can enhance your well-being. And I think those are really important in this day and age, actually.

Okay, so you see me there. I represented. Yeah, it's coming up at the end of September.

I believe it's the 25th to the 27th of September 2025 in Winnipeg. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's really, really cool, the images.

Like it's like a collage of different figures and there's love and it looks like some Indigenous stuff too. Yes. Yeah.

We have quite a few presenters there and it's going to be quite an event. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's really, really cool, the images.

Like it's like a collage of different figures and there's love and it looks like some Indigenous stuff too. Yeah, it's really cool. Oh, continue being an artist.

Well, I, you know, I have such, I love how things change, shift and change. You can ask me this tomorrow and then next week and the week after that, I probably have a different answer every time. The key ingredient that defines my style, it's an embodiment, you know, my style is, and I may not be using the, you know, artistically correct words, but ways in which I would define it is, again, intuitive.

My style is also very sensual, but at the same time as being sensual, it's Afro-centric. It is Indigenous in its own way. It is, you know, I feel that it's also, it can be tactile and it speaks of a story that changes each time you look at it.

I love what it does for me when I decide to finish the work and then have a conversation with it afterwards. How do I arrive? What did you say? How did I arrive at what makes my abstract expressionist style specifically mine? It's a relational thing. It's, if you look at like from 2010, I started to write this document and every time I meet someone specific that informs my art or a creative move that I make, I document it in this studio timeline, that's what I call it.

Every time I've received an invitation to speak somewhere, I document it. I happen to have a spiritual director and how do I, how did I meet that person? Like this is, this is part and parcel of how things have happened in my trajectory of my creative life and what has actually informed me as someone who has a particular style in my work. I attended a Black mental health conference, a virtual one, and I made a point every time I'm on a virtual call.

Yeah, like not the technical, I guess, with the letters and numbers and yeah. Yeah, but this, this one sounds much more rewarding for you. What would you say was the key ingredient and what defines your, after you receive your education in psychotherapy, will you continue being an artist? Yeah, it's, it seems like you, you just love this community part of it where you're, where you're a therapist, but you're using art as the vehicle to be the therapy.

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Yeah, if you're a psychotherapist, that's, that's just words really. Like it's mostly like talk therapy, right? And I don't think that that's, that's like, as you've been describing, it's the art and the community that, that is really sort of central to, to. From one of your more recent series titled It's a Black Thing, was this relating to the transgender identity movement or more personal reflection? Can you elaborate for our audience what your intention was in this series? Was it connected with your Jamaican roots? Um, It's a Black Thing is really just a sort of a play on words and of me personalizing my own experience as someone who, though I was born in Jamaica, left Jamaica at the age of two, my parents moved to Canada and became educators.

(59:58 - 1:02:10)

Um, we moved to a small town called Edson, Alberta at the time, 4,000. We were one of two Black families. And so, you know, people tend to think that certain, um, behaviors or, or, um, interests when it comes to Black community are, are somehow they've been stereotypical.

Oh, you must like basketball, or you must like this type of music, or, um, do you wear your hair this way? Because everybody who looks like you does. Um, It's a Black Thing for me is completely an adjacent thing to what people might think. So my upbringing as a Black girl was quite different than perhaps many, many Black people, let's just say in Ontario or in Canada, they may have spent more time in the Caribbean or Africa or any other Black nation that they may have come from in states.

For me, I was accustomed to being around a variety of other cultures. And that might be the backstory to perhaps where the It's a Black Thing grew. How I show that in my work, again, it's as simple as me.

I want to do a series that just focuses on Black as the color choice. I'm just doing monochromatic work. So I've got a series of small gouache and watercolor pieces that will be showcased in an upcoming exhibition.

And I just wanted to focus on using Black because it's so powerful. And it's quite impactful. But at the same time, it's not easy to just stick with one color, one hue, one value, right? Within that explanation, perhaps others can make their own interpretation of what a Black thing is.

(1:02:11 - 1:04:12)

Right? Yeah. Thanks for the question, though. What was that? Well, you know, I was just, when I saw that, because it was in one of your most recent posts on, I think, Instagram, and I just thought the title, I was like, oh, is this relating to identity? Right? And then I thought, well, what's been happening a lot lately is this whole transgender identity sort of movement that's been kind of going around sort of society lately.

I thought maybe it's connected to that. I don't know. I was kind of just seeing what it could be related to, really, you know? And you know, I mean, it's a fair question.

And at the same time, I seem to be a little bit sometimes ambiguous because what isn't related to identity, right? I mean, really, I think that there are so many things that are related to identity. It's what you choose to extract from it, you know? But I think it's a poignant question. And I appreciate the discourse that happens from the series when it comes out, when it's exhibited.

And so I'll say this too, Carolyn, that I'm preparing right now for an exhibition happening at the Robert McLachlan Gallery in Oshawa. And it's meant to be open to the public August, and I believe September 28th will be the official opening of this talk and all of that. So if you wanted to check out the Robert McLachlan Gallery's website, you'll see it there as an upcoming exhibition.

Looking forward to it. It's titled Being In and Moving Through. And it's all about the process of healing.

(1:04:13 - 1:04:38)

And I speak a little bit on what you heard me talk about today. Because yeah, you can see so many just interpretations of what that could represent. Because like you said, it could be identity, it could be, it could be spirituality, it could be emotion, it could be, it could be many things.

(1:04:38 - 1:05:06)

You get it, you get it. Like, if you asked yourself the question, and filled in what comes after being in blank, and moving through blank, how could you fill that in? Like, I mean, if I was to ask you that right now? Well, well, you can think of it in like, you can being in love, being in despair, being in water like this. That's just the first thing that I can think of.

(1:05:08 - 1:05:31)

There you go. Yeah. So it opens up the imagination.

And that's, that's really, yeah, I'm gonna go back outside of intuition. Imagination is, is how I would identify my work, my abstract work. But yeah, so many ways, but that's, that's where I'm at.

(1:05:36 - 1:05:44)

We've actually reached the end of the questions for your interview, Georgia. Thank you. Good way to end.

(1:05:47 - 1:06:23)

Thank you so much for sharing your creative practice. And it was a pleasure speaking with you on how you work and, and all that your your sort of creative endeavors have sort of brought to your life. And I look forward to chatting with you in the future.

And seeing where your creativity takes you. And I will definitely take a take a look at the Robert McLaughlin gallery website. Thank you so much for sharing your creative practice.

(1:06:23 - 1:08:00)

And it was a pleasure speaking with you on on how you work and but but yeah, it's like it's just your your practice is just it's so I don't know, it's enlightening, engaging. It's just illuminating. There's so many so many aspects to your practice.

It's just yeah, it's just really nice. Thank you so much, Carolyn. I appreciated this opportunity.

And I'm definitely looking forward to not only listening to this recording, but also your previous work and just sending you lots of love and light. Thank you. Good to hear.

No, it's good to hear that illuminating. I like that that use of words, too. It's good to hear that illuminating.

I like that that use of words, too. Yeah, I hope to continue in this way and and still offer as much as I can and have people, you know, benefit in ways that also benefit me. Thank you so much, Georgia.

And take care. Bye for now. Bye for now.

Take care. Join me next time as I go down another rabbit hole with another creative professional on their insights, their inspirations, and their ingenuity.