I have enjoyed making things since childhood and discovered a talent for drawing in my early teens.

In art college I studied 3-dimensional design, going on to work as a commercial interior designer in London during the 1980’s. However, following a life-changing illness my creative interests shifted, and after a period of intense personal change and professional retraining I qualified as an art psychotherapist in 2005. This experience, as well as my subsequent endeavours as art therapy practitioner and educator, profoundly influenced my artistic practice as I began to work more intuitively, responding to different situations and exploring aspects of the human condition through more abstract artworks across a range of media.

Pursuing my interest in how art can help sensitise us to the affective nature of human situations and experience, my recent practice-based Ph.D. research in fine art includes site specific projects, installations, sound pieces, writings, and other ‘things’, all of which may be thought of as multi-layered embodied weavings that respond to the particular situation. (For more details of my research see https://www.debbiemichaels.co.uk).

While my artistic practice does not settle comfortably in one place, I continue to be drawn to the complex nature of humanity and the dynamic relation between internal and external worlds. Whether drawing, modelling with clay, or assembling objects and things, it is through the embodied process and experience of ‘making’ that I come to understand more about the materials and tools I use, the subject matter, the context in which the work might sit, and myself.