Acrylic Painting Art Class

Professional Art Therapy Course

Led by certified art therapist
Certificate is provided

Professional Art Therapy in Singapore

led by certified art therapist

“Art therapy uses the creative process of art making to improve and enhance the physical, mental and emotional well-being of individuals of all ages.”

— American Art Therapy Association

We live in an era of relentless noise — digital, emotional, social. Many of us carry stresses, anxieties, and unspoken feelings that conventional conversations struggle to reach. Art therapy offers a different kind of access. Through colour, mark-making, texture, and form, it creates a space where what cannot be said can still be expressed — and where expression itself becomes a path to healing.

This is not about artistic talent. It never has been. Art therapy is about the process, not the product — the act of making, not the quality of what is made.

Understanding Art Therapy

What is Art Therapy — and how is it different from art class?

Art therapy is a distinct mental health profession that integrates the visual arts with psychotherapy and counselling. In other words, professional personal development programme that integrates artistic creation, psychological principles, and emotional support.

It is not a creative hobby, and it is not an art lesson. Unlike traditional art classes, it does not focus on artistic skills or the aesthetic quality of the artwork. Instead, it uses visual art as a non-verbal form of communication, creating a bridge between inner emotions and outward expression. It is a professionally guided process in which the making of art becomes a therapeutic medium — a way to explore emotions, process experiences, and build psychological resilience.

Feelings that are often difficult to express through words—such as anxiety, stress, confusion, emotional exhaustion, or inner conflict—can be safely released through colours, lines, and mixed-media creative expression.

Art therapists are Master’s level professionals trained in both the theory and application of art as therapy, as well as in counselling and psychotherapy. They are skilled in a range of art modalities — drawing, painting, sculpture, mixed media — and trained in assessment, ethical practice, and working with diverse populations and needs. Regardless of artistic experience, anyone can use the creative process to explore subconscious emotions, develop self-awareness, integrate emotional experiences, and promote inner healing. Art Therapy is a gentle and accessible pathway to emotional well-being and personal growth, suitable for people of all ages and backgrounds.

The discipline was formalised in the mid-20th century. British artist Adrian Hill coined the term “art therapy” after observing the emotional benefits that creative activity brought to tuberculosis patients recovering in hospital. Around the same time, American educator and psychoanalyst Margaret Naumburg advocated for art as a form of psychotherapy, emphasising its role in surfacing the unconscious through symbolic imagery. The influence of Carl Jung — who encouraged patients to draw mandalas as a tool for self-discovery — remains deeply present in the field today.

Source: American Art Therapy Association (AATA); Naumburg, M. — foundational texts in art psychotherapy.

Today, art therapy is practised in hospitals, schools, rehabilitation centres, wellness centres, prisons, and private practice settings around the world. In Singapore, the Art Therapists’ Association of Singapore (ATAS) — founded in 2008 with just ten registered therapists — has grown steadily as awareness of art therapy’s effectiveness has deepened.

“The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” — Aristotle

The Therapeutic Mechanism

How does making art actually heal the mind? How Art Therapy Helps People Achieve Better Emotional Well-being?

In today’s fast-paced and high-pressure world, many people experience academic stress, workplace burnout, relationship challenges, anxiety, and emotional fatigue. However, few have a safe, non-judgemental space to express and process their emotions. Over time, suppressed emotions can lead to mental and physical exhaustion, emotional imbalance, and reduced overall well-being.

The therapeutic power of art is not mystical — it is neurological. When we engage in focused creative activity, the brain enters a state of absorbed attention that quiets the prefrontal cortex — the seat of self-criticism, rumination, and anxiety. The art-making process activates the brain’s reward pathways, promotes the release of dopamine, and reduces cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone.

A landmark study published in Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association found that 45 minutes of creative activity significantly reduced cortisol levels in 75% of participants — regardless of prior artistic experience or skill level. You do not need to be talented. You simply need to make.

Kaimal, G., Ray, K., & Muniz, J. (2016). Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants' Responses Following Art Making. Art Therapy: Journal of the AATA, 33(2), 74–80.

Art also engages what psychologists call the “right-brain” mode of processing — the part of us that thinks in images, feelings, and sensations rather than words and logic. For many people, emotions that resist verbal articulation find a natural expression through mark-making, colour, and form. Art therapy gives the unspeakable a shape.

Research published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2025) found that art therapy combined with mindfulness approaches significantly improved emotional regulation, reduced anxiety, and enhanced relaxation levels among participants — with measurable effects visible even in EEG (brainwave) monitoring during sessions.

Nature/Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2025). Effects of EEG-based art therapy on emotion regulation, psychological well-being, relaxation and attention levels.

The Therapeutic Mechanism

How does making art actually heal the mind?

Emotional Release Without Words
Relieves Stress and Promotes Relaxation
Many emotions — grief, anger, fear, overwhelm — resist language. Art provides an alternative channel: a place to put what cannot be spoken. The act of making externalises internal experience, creating distance and perspective that words alone cannot always achieve. In art therapy, the artwork becomes a safe container for difficult feelings.

Mindfulness Through Making
Focused art-making is inherently a mindfulness practice. When you are mixing colour, observing how paint moves, or carefully rendering a line, you are fully present — anchored in the sensory now. Research on Mindfulness-Based Art Therapy (MBAT) consistently shows reductions in stress and anxiety, improvements in sleep quality, and enhanced emotional regulation comparable to formal meditation practice.

Stress and Cortisol Reduction
Creative activity directly reduces cortisol — the body’s stress hormone — and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, shifting the body from “fight-or-flight” into a state of rest and recovery. This is not just a feeling of relaxation; it is a measurable physiological change. Regular creative engagement builds stress resilience over time.
Through immersive painting and hands-on creative activities, participants gradually release tension and relax both mentally and physically. Visual art provides a natural outlet for emotions, helping to reduce anxiety, frustration, and emotional stress while restoring a sense of inner calm.

Letting Go and Processing Trauma
Art therapy is particularly effective for trauma, because traumatic memories are often stored in the body and in imagery rather than in linear narrative. Creating art about difficult experiences — even symbolically or abstractly — can access and process these stored experiences in ways that conventional talk therapy sometimes cannot reach. It allows release without re-traumatisation.

Self-Awareness and Inner Discovery & Understanding
The symbolic language of art — the colours we choose, the marks we make, the subjects that draw us — often reveals aspects of our inner life that conscious thought conceals. Creative expression provides direct access to the subconscious mind. Within a supportive, pressure-free environment, participants can discover their authentic emotions through their artwork, identify the root causes of emotional challenges, clarify their inner needs, and develop a deeper understanding of themselves. This strengthens emotional resilience, self-awareness, and emotional regulation. Carl Jung observed that the images we create can be windows into the deeper self. Art therapy uses this reflective quality deliberately, fostering insight, self-understanding, and personal growth.

Restored Calm, Improved Wellbeing
A meta-analysis of mindfulness-based art interventions published in 2025 found that creative art practices consistently reduced anxiety symptoms across diverse populations, with effects sustained over follow-up periods. Regular art-making builds what researchers call “eudaimonic wellbeing” — a deep sense of meaning, purpose, and psychological flourishing that goes beyond the absence of stress.

Art as Mindfulness Practice

When the brush becomes a meditation

Mindfulness is the practice of bringing full, non-judgemental attention to the present moment. Art-making, when approached with this intention, is one of its most natural expressions. The sensation of a brush on paper, the watching of colour spread and bleed, the rhythm of mark-making — these absorb the attention completely, leaving no space for past regret or future worry.

Mindfulness-Based Art Therapy (MBAT) formalises this connection, pairing guided mindfulness awareness with art-making activities. A 2024–2025 scoping review in ScienceDirect found that MBAT interventions effectively reduced stress and anxiety while improving emotional regulation and sleep quality — often outperforming mindfulness-only or art-only interventions.

You do not need a diagnosis or a crisis to benefit. Anyone carrying the weight of a busy life, difficult emotions, or simply the need to pause and return to themselves can find in art-making a genuinely restorative practice.

Participants learn structured methods and creative tools that can be applied in daily life, while also gaining the ability to offer gentle emotional support and creative guidance to family members, friends, and others

ScienceDirect (2025). A scoping review on mindfulness-based art therapy for psychological well-being.

Art as Emotional Release

The freedom of making without judgement

One of the most liberating aspects of therapeutic art-making is the removal of the expectation to produce something “good.” In art therapy, the work is not evaluated aesthetically. It is witnessed. The process of making — the physical act of putting colour or mark on a surface — is itself the point, and in that freedom, something remarkable often happens: we release what we have been holding.

Expressive art-making activates the body’s own natural relaxation response. The repetitive, rhythmic aspects of drawing or painting — similar in this way to breathing exercises or walking meditation — calm the nervous system and create space for emotional processing. Feelings that have been suppressed or stored can surface through the artwork, and in surfacing, begin to dissolve.

This is the “letting go” that art therapy practitioners describe — not a forced release, but a gentle permission: to feel, to express, and to move on.

The research is clear: creative expression measurably improves mental health

75%

of participants showed reduced cortisol after 45 minutes of art-making, regardless of skill level

Kaimal et al., Art Therapy Journal, 2016

slower biological ageing rate in weekly arts participants — equivalent to regular physical exercise

Fancourt et al., Innovation in Aging, 2026

31%

lower risk of dementia among regular arts participants over a 14-year follow-up study

Fancourt & Steptoe, BMJ, 2019

MBAT

Mindfulness-Based Art Therapy reduces anxiety and improves sleep quality — often exceeding mindfulness-only interventions

ScienceDirect Scoping Review, 2025

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” — Pablo Picasso

Why Choose Art Therapy Course by Visual Arts Centre?

1) Learn from Experienced Art Therapy Instructors

Our instructors possess extensive experience in both professional art education and Art Therapy practice. They combine strong artistic expertise with psychological knowledge and have worked with participants from diverse backgrounds.

Their warm, supportive teaching style encourages self-expression through attentive listening, thoughtful guidance, and personalised mentoring throughout the course.

Workshop Facilitator

Yen Chua

BFA — San Francisco Art Institute, USA (1993)

Diploma in Chinese Painting — Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts (1996)

MA (Research) — National Institute of Education, Singapore (2002)

MA in Art Therapy — LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore (2007)

Certified Art Therapist & Co-Founder, Art Therapists’ Association of Singapore (ATAS)

About the Art Therapist

Two decades at the intersection of art, healing, and education

Yen Chua is one of Singapore’s most experienced and respected art therapists — an artist, educator, and one of the founding members of the Art Therapists’ Association of Singapore (ATAS). Her path to art therapy is both professional and deeply personal: despite a challenging childhood, Yen found in art a means of transcendence, and has spent the past two decades helping others find the same.

With a Master of Arts in Art Therapy from LASALLE College of the Arts (2007) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute, Yen brings to her practice a rare combination of rigorous clinical training and a life fully committed to artistic making. She works predominantly with acrylic, charcoal, and ink — and her own mixed-media artworks are described as “vivid portrayals of the surreal, mythical and magical realm, echoes of her different mental states, dreams and aspirations.”

“Art therapy uses the creative process to help people resolve conflicts, manage behaviour, reduce stress, increase self-esteem and self-awareness, and achieve insight.”

Yen has worked in an extraordinarily diverse range of settings — with individuals experiencing social-emotional difficulties, addiction, trauma, behavioural challenges, and mental health issues; with cancer patients, elderly clients, teenagers, children with special needs, and prison inmates. She has taught at the National Institute of Education, NAFA, Temasek Polytechnic, and LASALLE College of the Arts, and has participated in art therapy missions in India through The Red Pencil Singapore.

In 2008, when ATAS was founded with only ten registered art therapists in Singapore, Yen was among them. Today she continues to shape the field she helped create — through her clinical practice, her teaching, and, now, her workshops at VAC Art Gallery & Studio.

2) Theory and Practical Training for Meaningful Growth

The programme balances professional theory with hands-on practice, enabling participants to achieve comprehensive personal growth within a relatively short period.

Participants study Art Therapy principles while exploring a wide range of visual art forms, including:

Oil Painting
Acrylic Painting
Watercolour
Chinese Ink Painting
Mixed Media Art
Nanyang Batik
Creative Collage
Clay Sculpting
Paper Cutting
Expressive Doodling
Handcrafted Creative Projects

Through step-by-step guidance, participants learn structured Art Therapy processes and practical techniques that can be confidently applied in both personal and professional settings.

Led by Yen Chua, this Art Therapy Course explores how creative expression can become a process of emotional release, mindfulness, and self-reflection.

Participants are guided through intuitive art-making exercises designed to reduce stress, encourage calm, and create space for emotional exploration in a safe and supportive environment.

The workshop includes:

Mindfulness-based art exercises
Reflective drawing and painting activities
Emotional release through creative expression
Relaxation-focused creative practice
Gentle guidance suitable for all experience levels

3) Suitable for Everyone — No Artistic Experience Required

No prior art experience is necessary.

The programme welcomes students, working professionals, parents, counsellors, educators, mental health practitioners, and anyone interested in personal growth and emotional well-being.

Whether you wish to reduce stress, explore your inner self, develop emotional resilience, or acquire Art Therapy skills for supporting others or pursuing related helping professions, this course offers a personalised learning journey that nurtures both emotional well-being and practical competence at your own pace.

Upon successful completion of the comprehensive Art Therapy programme, participants will receive a Certificate of Completion issued by the Visual Arts Centre Singapore.

Our Location

Dhoby Ghaut Art Studio

Address:

10 Penang Road, #01-02 Dhoby Ghaut Green,
Singapore (238469)

Exit from Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station Exit B and turn left, we are there in 30m!

VAC Chinatown Art Gallery & Studio

Address:

20B Mosque Street, Singapore (059500)
*2 minutes walk from Chinatown MRT Station Exit A

Take a left turn upon exiting the Chinatown MRT Station Exit A (Pagoda Street). Turn right to go to Mosque Street. Finally, walk towards 20B, we’re on the 3rd floor of the shophouse.

Opening Hour

Dhoby Ghaut Art Studio
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10am-10pm
Tuesday 10am-6pm
Thursday 10am-6pm
Saturday 10am-9pm
Sunday 10am-6pm
closed on some Public Holidays (enquire to check with us)

在新加坡哪里能学专业素描／速写、油画、水彩、丙烯、水墨、艺术作品集准备、儿童美术、儿童青少年书法等专业美术绘画课？

Agree Terms & Conditions

Terms & Conditions – Neon Glow Art Jamming & Colour Blast Party (Saturday Sessions Only)

Participation

Participation in the Neon Glow Art Jamming & Colour Blast Party is voluntary. By participating, all participants acknowledge that they understand and accept the nature of the activities and agree to participate at their own risk.

Health & Safety

The event takes place in an outdoor festival environment featuring bright lighting effects, flashing lights, amplified music, and high sound levels, which may not be suitable for individuals who are sensitive to light, sound, or have related medical conditions.
Participants are responsible for ensuring that they are medically fit to participate in the activities.

Colour Blast Party

The Colour Blast Party uses coloured cornflour powder.
By participating in the Colour Blast Party, participants confirm that they:
- Do not have any known allergy or sensitivity to cornflour, corn, coloured powder, or similar materials.
- Do not suffer from asthma, respiratory conditions, or any medical condition that may be aggravated by airborne powder.
- Understand the nature of the activity and voluntarily choose to participate.

Face & Body Painting

Optional face and/or body painting may be available during the event.
Participants choosing to receive face or body painting confirm that they have no known allergies or skin conditions that may be affected by cosmetic or body paint products. Participants with sensitive skin are advised to refrain from participating.

Assumption of Risk

Participants acknowledge that participation in the event, including but not limited to art jamming, the Colour Blast Party, face and/or body painting, and related activities, carries inherent risks, including accidental slips, falls, minor injuries, allergic reactions, respiratory irritation, or other unforeseen incidents.

Indemnity and Release

By participating in the event, participants agree, to the fullest extent permitted by law, to release, discharge, and indemnify Visual Arts Centre, CHIJMES, their respective officers, employees, volunteers, contractors, sponsors, partners, and representatives from any and all claims, demands, liabilities, losses, damages, costs, expenses, injuries, or actions arising out of or in connection with participation in the event, except where such claims arise directly from the negligence or wilful misconduct of the organisers.

Personal Responsibility

Participants are responsible for their own personal belongings and should exercise reasonable care while participating. Appropriate clothing and footwear suitable for an outdoor event are recommended.

Organiser's Rights

Visual Arts Centre and CHIJMES reserve the right to refuse participation or remove any participant whose behaviour is deemed unsafe, disruptive, or poses a risk to others. The organisers also reserve the right to modify, postpone, suspend, or cancel the event due to weather, safety concerns, or unforeseen circumstances.

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