Carla Van Laar: Art Therapy

Carla van Laar is an Artist and Arts Therapist. Carla currently lives and works in Victoria, South Eastern Australia, on the traditional lands of the Boon Wurrung people in Inverloch. Carla has 30 years’ experience working with people and the arts for health and wellbeing in community organisations, justice, health and education contexts. She has also lectured and supervised Art Therapy students at a number of institutions and in 2018 received an Artist Fellowship at RMIT’s creative research lab, “Creative Agency”. She insists on being part of a creative revolution in which art re-embodies lived experience, brings us to our senses, makes us aware of the interconnectedness of all life and is an agent of social change. Carla’s first book “Bereaved Mother’s Heart” broke social taboos about maternal grief, and her latest book “Seeing her stories,” is based on her Doctoral research and continues her mission of making unseen stories visible through art.