Creating a Beautiful Life
Creating a Beautiful Life is a peer-led, creative recovery group that supports people to reclaim a sense of beauty in their day to day lives.
Perhaps we lost it because of trauma, or mental illness or other adverse life events.
By doing art and reflecting on the world together, we make the ‘invisible visible’, and we are all the wiser for it.
In the midst of our collective suffering, we practice tuning in to the beauty that is in and around us, and a small fragment of that appears in our art.
To listen to the podcast below or search “Creating a Beautiful Life” and “A Good Mind To” in the search bar of your favourite podcast platform.
Creating a Beautiful Life
Artists Statements
Elle
I am a human who tries to untangle stressors around human/nature disconnection through art. Watercolour pigments and their relationships with water/paper are my preferred medium. I snorkel locally to maximise my flow/water relationship and to gain inspiration from the profuse life off our shoreland.
Amanda
I love being creative, it is so therapeutic. This course has taught me how to access my creativity within. My work represents the beauty found everywhere in the world.
Katie
Bridget
Living is the artform that best captures my attention, where both joy and suffering have their place. Flowers that grow through the cracks in the sidewalk are often the most wonderful because they’ve managed to flourish despite the odds.
Rachel
I am a self-taught artist, and I use my imagination as the inspiration for my work. I like learning about the difference between the right brain and the left brain. My work is full of fairies and magical creatures because there is no right or wrong with these guys. I’m not limited by reality.
Robyn
I love colour because it makes me feel happy – what I like about the course is we get to play with different paints, watercolours, gel pens, salt on watercolours. I have grown close to the girls and don’t feel so alone in my depression. I look forward to Friday class. They also, like me, feel like I don’t fit in. I am different to everyone else.
