Healing Through Art

The most gut-wrenching, taboo-provoking, expressive art show you’ll see this season. In this exhibit, Joyce Aubrey, founder of Finding Our Voices an organization working with individuals of sexual trauma, shares her personal process paintings created during her journey of healing. Healing Through Art is a collection of works displayed not for their value as fine art but as an invitation to discuss the healing attributes of art and how it can be used to work through trauma in therapy.

Artist’s Statement:

Joyce Aubrey spent most of her life approaching art as an admirer. She entered
the expressive arts through the doorway of crisis. In the midst of flashbacks to
childhood sexual abuse, her therapist recommended process painting classes. For
more than a decade, these paintings that chronicle her healing journey were
hidden in a closet.

Once Joyce shared her process paintings, she learned that they served as a
catalyst for other survivors to use art to move feelings out of their body and to
express their emotions. Joyce has facilitated process painting classes for survivors
and others.

In 2009 she founded the non-profit: Finding Our Voices, with the purpose of
empowering survivors of sexual abuse by engaging in the expressive arts. For
more than fifteen years, Joyce has advocated for survivors by speaking, painting,
and writing. She presented multiple webinars online during the pandemic
lockdown.

Her award- winning memoir: Beyond Aftershocks: Reclaiming Self after Sexual
Trauma is about a five-year slice of her life when she experiences flashbacks and
is faced with the decision whether to believe them or bury them. By choosing to
heal rather than deny her abuse, Joyce experienced a return to vibrant physical
and emotional health. In addition to her memoir, she wrote the companion book,
Little Girls are Like Kittens, in the voice of a toddler who experiences sexual abuse.
Joyce’s books are available at Academy Art and Frame, online, or on the non-
profit website: findingourvoicesCS.org. Proceeds from memoir sales benefit
Finding Our Voices.