Michele Gunn

Michele studied the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, gaining her MA Hons. in 1970. She married Richard Gunn in 1968 and they have a son, Michael, born 1969. After graduating she trained in Community Education, (1974) worked as an activity co-ordinator with elderly people and volunteered with young people with learning difficulties and adults with mental health issues: in 1982 she enrolled with Hertfordshire School of Art and Design, St Albans, (now amalgamated with the University of Hertfordshire) to train as an art therapist – a long-held aspiration! (Qualified 1983)

At St Albans she rediscovered her confidence in painting and learnt about the communicative power of making images. She also gained experience of working in the studio and began to understand the group studio environment as a stimulus to creativity. This model has remained at the heart of her painting and her clinical and group work. The other big influence her training was the architectural and spiritual space of the St Albans Abbey, where she spent many hours drawing or just contemplating. She also discovered the Religious Society of Friends –

the Quakers – and began to attend Meetings while at St Albans, becoming a member some years after returning to Edinburgh. The living silent space of Quaker Meeting continues to be a place of resource and solace for her.

Michele has always believed that art should be accessible and practicable for everyone. She has been involved in mounting exhibitions of art by women and by people coping with severe and enduring mental health issues. From 1986-2004, she worked for Edinburgh University Settlement, a local social action charity, for which she ran its mental health project, Stepping Stones. During her time there, she developed the project from a weekly drop-in to a five-days-a-week arts, education and arts therapies-focussed service, with open studio groups central to its provision.

In 1992, the Settlement raised European Horizon funding to start up the first professional training in Art Psychotherapy in Scotland. Michele was involved in writing funding applications and in setting up the first placement network for the new training. The M. Sc. in Art Therapy is now based at Queen Margaret University; Michele has worked as a group facilitator of training workshops, supervisor and visiting lecturer on the course.

After retiring, she has focussed on developing her private art therapy practice and on working with Jane Angel, artist, teacher and counsellor, and Simon Jackson, counsellor and artist, in a joint venture called GroupArtProcess. This project runs art-workshops which explore the vital link between creativity and emotional, psychological and social well-being.

Michele has also, finally, become able to give more time to her own painting. She tends to work from whatever catches her attention and sees the world around her as a multi-layered environment which interacts with us as much as we do with it. It seems important to stop and look, because perhaps we do not always see at first, what is really there. For Michele, to draw and paint something – a still life, a tree, a remembered or imagined landscape or a person’s face – is to begin to apprehend something which may not always reveal itself at first sight.

All papers, text and images are copywrite of Michele Gunn© 2012
Website Design by Meshhum®