"All of the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself." - Chuck Close

Messy Hands, Happy Hearts Art Therapists are registered with ANZACATA, the professional body for Creative Therapists in Australia.  As a part of the this membership, professional development and supervision is required to ensure that the highest standards are achieved and that knowledge and practises are relevant and up to date.

All relevant DHS and National Police History Checks are current and are available upon request.  

As well as this all staff at Messy Hands, Happy Hearts have completed the Through Their Eyes training.    This is the official South Australian Government regulated course for mandated notifiers in accordance with the Children and Young People (Safety) Act 2017.  

I have always been a creative soul. From early on in my youth I enjoyed creating stories, drawing, craft and creating elaborate constructions out of Lego with my siblings. My Grandmother used to spend hours with me teaching me her latest craft fad. I could knit at age 9, was writing novels (although quite bad) in my teens and developed a love of photography and art during school. 

During University I discovered a love of cinema and filmmaking. I always had a love of photography, and cinema took this love to the next level. I quickly added Screen Studies to my course load and graduated with a Double Major in Screen Studies and English. I knew that I wanted to teach and soon enrolled in a Graduate Diploma of Education where I trained to be an English and Media teacher.

After teaching for a few years in both Australia and the UK, my daughter came along, and I took a break for a few years to be a full-time parent. I knew I did not want to return to teaching full-time, so worked as a Director of a school OSHC and Vacation Care Program for a while before starting work as a part-time SSO in a local primary school. It was during this time that I worked with a lot of children with needs that could not be met by the classroom alone. I assisted children in small group settings and individually with a variety of different needs. I helped with spelling and times tables, dealing with social problems and helping facilitate “What’s the Buzz?” sessions as well as providing help and comfort when things got too much for little minds.

It was during this time that I started to see the correlation between art and emotional regulation. I have always known that art relaxes me, but saw just how powerful a tool it could be when dealing with children who did not fit into the status quo.  I used the book “The Red Beast” by Kay Al-Ghani to explore anger and anger management with children, letting them visually create their own “Red Beast” and allowing them more insight in their emotions and how the regulate them. I used Zentangling to help with developing children’s self-calming strategies and used collage to look what constitutes a catastrophe and how to put things into perspective. There were artistic ways of dealing with many issues that were arising in classrooms and I began to see the multitude of ways that art could be an entry point for starting a conversation with students about their emotions and how to deal with them.

During this time, a close family friend was going through the early stages of a diagnosis of Autism for one of her children. A large part of my work as an SSO was working with children with an ASD diagnosis and I had developed a good array of tools and knowledge around supporting children with ASD. One of the therapies my friend had been recommended was Art Therapy. There was nothing available for her to access in Southern Adelaide at that time and it got me thinking…

After I little bit of research into Art Therapy and a visit to the Ikon Institute in Adelaide, I had decided to embark on a whole new aspect to my career as an Art Therapist. Since completing my Diploma of Transpersonal Art Psychotherapy in late 2017 I have worked as an Art Therapist and Group Facilitator. I have been able to combine my educational experience, what I learnt working as an SSO and my Art Therapy training to provide therapy services to a large variety of clients. 

Through this process, I have also discovered a lot about myself. I am a major Geek and love all forms of Pop Culture. I love movies and music, literature and theatre and discovered that I am an introvert and learnt a lot about what that means in a society that is full of extroverts. This self-discovery has expanded my knowledge and helped me empathize and assist those who also feel isolated from modern society. 

As far as art styles go, I have always suggested that I am a “Jack of all trades” and have interest in a lot of different areas of creative expression from fine line art to Pop Art. I also love other forms of creative expression such as literature, music and filmmaking and have been incorporating these areas into the possible art forms used in my sessions. 

Messy Hands, Happy Hearts had been a dream of mine since I started my Art Therapy training and at the end of 2020, I finally decided to make it a reality.

I look forward to working with clients for a wide variety of backgrounds and assisting them attain their goals. Art is a fantastic form of communication that requires no words, and often we can express what we are feeling better in ways other than talking about our feelings. With all the forms of creative expression available, I know there is an art form that will connect with every client.