Working Alongside: Communicating visual empathy within collaborative art therapy

The terms working alongside, parallel artmaking, painting together and joint activity have been used to describe an innovative and experimental phase in art therapy practice that involves the art therapist’s arts-based response towards the client either in one-to-one or groupwork contexts. This method involves the art therapist’s artmaking within the relational dynamic and is done so to extend an arts-based connection with the client and further non-verbal communication through visual arts media. The approach described enables the therapist to enter a shared creative space using art as an improvised method to connect, interact, reflect or mirror the client’s art process. This article explores the scope of this practice approach and the importance of visual empathy, its contribution to clinical formulation and the role of clinical supervision in reflecting on the artwork to gain access to intersubjective experiences between the therapist, the client and their creative collaboration.