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Deanna R. K. Barton
born 1986
Atlanta, GA
Professional Bio
Deanna is a Board Certified Art Therapist, educator, and artist creating and holding spaces for people of color to connect to innate creativity, heal and bloom. Deanna is a member of the American Art Therapy Association’s (AATA) Multicultural Committee and has been featured in several AATA publications, including the 2021 DEI Gallery and Art Therapy Today. Deanna is a professor at Edinboro University's Art Therapy Program, and a member of the Accreditation Council for Art Therapy Education. She received a MA in Art Therapy from The George Washington University and a BA in Psychology from Spelman College.
Deanna is the founder of ALLUMA: Art & Healing a private practice and virtual art and wellness space that supports the healing and well-being of women of color living with anxiety, depression, perfectionism, and the experiences of racial stress and trauma.
Artist Statement
I've come to respect my feelings. My works give emotions form and room to breathe. Each one helps to soften an emotional callus. My process allows for increased intimacy with the internal space where strength resides; where the wounded healer, the child, the shadow, and the inner critic can collaborate. Our mental health cannot thrive under the suppression of self-expression. Vulnerability and acceptance of feeling are necessary. When numbing emotional sensations are viewed as coping, we hinder our ability to fully live a truly human existence. We cannot allow stigma to keep us from healing our psychological wounds. We must reinvent how we view our mental health and how we care for it. I create to provide insight into a process of healing through forms that are deeply ingrained in our souls. I create to make space for feeling; to bring awareness to the self, and to share experiences of healing.
Artist Biography
Deanna R. K. Barton’s unique knowledge of art as a vehicle for healing and communication along with a background in dance and movement inform her approach to conceptual art and mixed media.
Her works invite us to turn inward, to feel and to reflect on ourselves and the world. Barton strongly believes that creativity is an innate human need that must be expressed in order to live a balanced and fulfilling life. In her roles as artist and art therapist, the medium and the process are the foundations of expression and healing.
Barton is a Board Certified Art Therapist and founder of ALLUMA: Art & Healing LLC, a private practice and virtual art and wellness space that supports the healing and well-being of women of color living with anxiety, depression, perfectionism, and the experiences of racial stress and trauma. She earned a BA in Psychology with a minor in Art from Spelman College (2008) and her MA in Art Therapy from The George Washington University (2011).
In her 2019 series, Ruminating, Barton chronicles moments of acceptance and transformation. Each image documents a point of time within a conceptual performance during which Barton played with clothing, color, and movement to explore memories, the unconscious, and stale, stagnant emotional energy trapped behind the skin. An iPhone 7 captured these moments of exploration and self-discovery.
When we are Ruminating, spiraling worries consume us. This series reminds us of the importance of authentic transparency as a means to release the pain and hurt we carry. Whether the pain is our own or that of ancestral origin, we must sit with it, learn from it and then move it outward.
born 1986
Atlanta, GA
Professional Bio
Deanna is a Board Certified Art Therapist, educator, and artist creating and holding spaces for people of color to connect to innate creativity, heal and bloom. Deanna is a member of the American Art Therapy Association’s (AATA) Multicultural Committee and has been featured in several AATA publications, including the 2021 DEI Gallery and Art Therapy Today. Deanna is a professor at Edinboro University's Art Therapy Program, and a member of the Accreditation Council for Art Therapy Education. She received a MA in Art Therapy from The George Washington University and a BA in Psychology from Spelman College.
Deanna is the founder of ALLUMA: Art & Healing a private practice and virtual art and wellness space that supports the healing and well-being of women of color living with anxiety, depression, perfectionism, and the experiences of racial stress and trauma.
Artist Statement
I've come to respect my feelings. My works give emotions form and room to breathe. Each one helps to soften an emotional callus. My process allows for increased intimacy with the internal space where strength resides; where the wounded healer, the child, the shadow, and the inner critic can collaborate. Our mental health cannot thrive under the suppression of self-expression. Vulnerability and acceptance of feeling are necessary. When numbing emotional sensations are viewed as coping, we hinder our ability to fully live a truly human existence. We cannot allow stigma to keep us from healing our psychological wounds. We must reinvent how we view our mental health and how we care for it. I create to provide insight into a process of healing through forms that are deeply ingrained in our souls. I create to make space for feeling; to bring awareness to the self, and to share experiences of healing.
Artist Biography
Deanna R. K. Barton’s unique knowledge of art as a vehicle for healing and communication along with a background in dance and movement inform her approach to conceptual art and mixed media.
Her works invite us to turn inward, to feel and to reflect on ourselves and the world. Barton strongly believes that creativity is an innate human need that must be expressed in order to live a balanced and fulfilling life. In her roles as artist and art therapist, the medium and the process are the foundations of expression and healing.
Barton is a Board Certified Art Therapist and founder of ALLUMA: Art & Healing LLC, a private practice and virtual art and wellness space that supports the healing and well-being of women of color living with anxiety, depression, perfectionism, and the experiences of racial stress and trauma. She earned a BA in Psychology with a minor in Art from Spelman College (2008) and her MA in Art Therapy from The George Washington University (2011).
In her 2019 series, Ruminating, Barton chronicles moments of acceptance and transformation. Each image documents a point of time within a conceptual performance during which Barton played with clothing, color, and movement to explore memories, the unconscious, and stale, stagnant emotional energy trapped behind the skin. An iPhone 7 captured these moments of exploration and self-discovery.
When we are Ruminating, spiraling worries consume us. This series reminds us of the importance of authentic transparency as a means to release the pain and hurt we carry. Whether the pain is our own or that of ancestral origin, we must sit with it, learn from it and then move it outward.
