Art's way of becoming
Why do we so often live by values, fears, and expectations we never fully chose?
Artonomy grew from this question. It explores how artmaking can help us work with the forces that shape what feels natural, necessary, or possible.
Artmaking can bring these forces into a visible and material form. A repeated mark, an avoided colour, a torn image, a hidden object, or a changed composition can show how a value is being protected, resisted, borrowed, or displaced.
This is where art meets autonomy. Artonomy is about using art to study how we become who we are — and how we might begin to take part in that becoming.
ABOUT FAYE
I am an art educator, emerging arts-based researcher, and Master of Art Therapy graduate based in Sydney. My work sits between art, education, philosophy, and everyday life.
For many years, I have been interested in a question that continues to shape both my research and teaching: why is it so difficult for people to live according to what genuinely matters to them, even when they understand themselves intellectually?
This question led me toward art therapy, arts-based research, and children’s education. Through this work, I became increasingly interested in how values are formed through culture, family, education, memory, bodily habit, and social expectation. I see artmaking as important because it allows these forces to become material and visible, rather than remaining abstract ideas.
My research explores how artmaking can help people work with value conflict, inherited expectations, and ways of living that no longer feel fully their own. I am especially interested in art as a form of inquiry: a way of thinking through image, symbol, material, gesture, and embodied experience.
Alongside research, I teach children using approaches that integrate art, reflection, mindfulness, philosophy, and emotional inquiry. I am interested in helping children develop attentiveness to their own ways of experiencing, valuing, and relating to the world, especially within cultures increasingly shaped by performance, optimisation, and comparison.
Artonomy grew from these experiences. The name combines art and autonomy, reflecting an ongoing exploration of how art may help us participate more consciously in the process of becoming.
CREATIVE INQUIRY FOR CHILDREN
This is a small-group online art course for children aged 8–12. Each session combines drawing, painting, storytelling, philosophy, mindfulness, and conversation around themes such as success, friendship, fear, technology, nature, identity, and what gives life meaning. Children are encouraged to think, question, imagine, and develop their own ideas through artmaking rather than simply following instructions or copying examples. The course was created from my background in art therapy and children’s art education, together with a long-standing interest in how children develop values, ways of thinking, and relationships with themselves and the world around them.
Artonomy classes are currently paused while I focus on future directions for the project. The classes remain an important part of Artonomy’s vision: using art, reflection, and creative inquiry to help children engage more deeply with themselves, others, and the world around them. Future learning programs will be announced here.
Loading days...
1 hr
BLOG
