About Me

Hi, I’m Lesley

Art therapist, supervisor, consultant

My Background

Initially drawn towards art therapy after reading “The Mission of Art” by Alex Grey and becoming interested in psychology during my undergraduate studies, I moved from my hometown of New Orleans to Portland OR in 2005 to attend the art therapy MA program at Marylhurst University. 

Psychedelic therapy has also been intriguing to me since I first learned of it in the early ’00s, and although I could not pursue it at the time I was in school, it has been an interest of mine for many years now, leading to my current involvement in the field. 

Before deciding to become a therapist I worked in the service industry. I have always made art in my spare time but in the past 5 years I have had a dedicated art making practice which has led to an increasing number of opportunities to share my art in galleries and at festivals. 

I currently live in Portland OR where I enjoy painting, going for hikes, spending time with my cat, 4 aquariums and multitude of houseplants and herb garden.

My Approach & Philosophy

My approach to practicing therapy has gone through multiple iterations over the past 2 decades.  Starting out in community mental health care, i have extensive training in conventional evidence-based approaches to therapy.  I have worked in residential and outpatient addiction treatment, an outpatient eating disorder clinic, a program focused on healthcare professionals in recovery, and my own private practice.

The longer I work in this field, the more I realize that I have so much to learn and I consider myself a life-long student.  The human psyche is complex, dynamic, multi-faceted, reflecting internal experience and narratives, collective processes and unconscious shadows.

Some approaches that have helped me to make sense of the landscape of human experience and emotion include trauma therapies such as EMDR which assists the nervous system to process and release stored traumatic memories, somatic based approaches to bypass deep seated but unhelpful inner narratives, and transpersonal therapy which acknowledges collective, ancestral, and spiritual processes impacting our relationships with ourselves, each other, and our communities.  

Art therapy being a more direct way to access the unconscious as well as to heal the nervous system through activation of flow states is one of my preferred methods of working.  Art therapy is easily combined with talk therapy to access more of the full spectrum of expression