Wading in knee deep : the art therapist in different end-of-life settings

In 2015, I interviewed four experienced visual art therapists about their work in cancer and palliative care. The study was inspired and informed by my private art therapy practice over many years with people living with or beyond cancer, and at end-of-life, in hospital out-patient centres and in the community. In that study, themes emerged in relation to the specific challenges, and to the privilege of working with people at end-of-life, expanding on a body of similarly focussed literature by other art therapist-researchers (Bardot, 2008; Bocking, 2005; Connell, 1998; Duesbury, 2005; Furman, 2011; Hardy, 2001, 2005, 2013; Luzzatto, 1998; Schaverien, 2002; Wood, 2005; Wood et al., 2013). To chart my readings of and responses to the interview texts, including the images I asked the therapists to make as part of the interview, I used an art-based method that I called immersive visual analysis. This method of analysis showed in visual form how the introduction of art-making into a research interview can radically transform the conversation (Thomson, 2019), so that it becomes more emotionally resonant.