Artist Statement
Emerging eco artist Lisa Davis-Peters uses nature materials from the land she finds sacred, as well as fabric and natural fibers to create art based upon who and what she finds in her body.
Through focusing-oriented art therapy and internal family systems work, she continues to listen and give voice to all the parts held within. With her art and poetry, she delves through layers of complexity connected to chronic pain, individual trauma, intergenerational trauma, and now finds home in herself and her body.
I’m not in my body,
I can’t think my way through.
Return to myself, this is backbone work.
First, resource, the tree is not what it seems to be.
Invisible pain from staking claims all come with a cost.
I’m not in my body,
I can’t think my way through.
Not In My Body
Family tree transformed.
Bandaging, cathartic, soothing.
I can stand to look now.
The tree is now what it needs to be.
Family tree transformed.
Family Tree Transformed
Needed nests.
Time to put down what I’d been holding.
Return to myself.
This is backbone work.
Needed Nests
Make a cradle.
Prepare for it.
Pain, I realize, is a trauma response.
And the antidote to pain
Is grounding.
The more I am in my body
The more I ground
The more I feel the trauma
Thaw out.
Clarity.
A crystal emerges from soil from deep within.
It is safe to be in my body,
to accept myself as I am.
Make a cradle.
Prepare for it.
Make A Cradle
Listen
A girl emerges from the heart.
She has a story to tell, right from the start.
Where her body said no and she didn’t listen.
I have come to listen.
I listen and save myself from holding onto an old story.
I have come back to listen.
Eyes closed
Bilateral motion
I worked the paint without intervention.
My mind allowed my body to lead.
And through this act a figure did seed.
The young prince emerges, births
after breaking open.
Out of fear, he comes.
I have grown up, I am ready to grow OUT.
From the vertical to the horizontal
HE is the nervous system: settled, crowned.
Open and ready.
His Face
Art therapist narrative changes from:
I get pain from this work.
to
I get energy from this work.
I’ve rewritten the story.
I’m in my body, safe, settled, secure.
A tree emerges and it is me.
A weaving, rooted: true and blue.
I am different than the others and no longer afraid
to be me.
Me and My Weaving
In the loom
I wait.
I wait for her.
In the loom
I sit.
Showing my true colours.
In the loom
I am.
In the loom.
Loom Womb