For information on the Dewdneys, Linda Nicholas, art therapist in London, Ontario, a student and friend of Irene Dewdney provided the information.

Selwyn Dewdney was a man of many talents. He started out his adult life as a missionary, then went on to became an artist, a teacher, a geographer, a writer. In 1949 he was invited to the Westminster Veteran’s Hospital in London, Ontario to work with psychiatric patients, and was given the title ‘art therapist”. In 1954, his wife Irene joined him. Irene’s interest in people, in art and psychoanalysis were brought together.

The Dewdneys were political activists and through their work they brought together their political principals and art. Seeing psychiatric patients as dispossessed and needing recognition as people, they encouraged the use of art as a vehicle for social empowerment; a way to resist the undermining of their social status and to gain personal acceptance.

In working with psychiatric patients, the Dewdney’s developed a technique over a period of twenty years. At first they offered the patients complete freedom in the art, but they found that the patients would be overwhelmed by the lack of structure. So, they developed an approach where they supported and helped their clients become objective about their art and thus more contained. The intention was to help the patients stand back from the expression and see themselves as separate.

While Selwyn was working in the hospital he produced a projective test for ‘shell shocked’ veterans. It is believed that this was the first projective test. In 1972 he moved away from social work and art therapy on to study rock paintings of primitive man.

Irene worked closely with her husband at the Westminster Veteran’s Hospital, but was also brought into the London Psychiatric Hospital and St Joseph’s, London Ontario. Most of her work was with psychiatric patients until towards the end of her career she worked with children and adolescents. In this work she maintained a focus on the objective approach as well as the integration of teaching and expression.

As Irene was working in the community in the 1970’s she developed a following and was encouraged to start training people in art therapy. An informal training program developed which eventually led to the establishment of the Post Graduate Diploma Program in Art Therapy through the Faculty of Part Time and Continuing Education at University of Western Ontario in 1986. Although she only taught and supervised the program in its initial years, Irene continued to be associated with it until she died.

Selwyn Dewdney died in 1979. Irene Dewdney died 1999 at the age of 84. I quote Linda Nicholas when she says: “Irene was one of the last of a vanishing breed: the untrained, highly skilled, broadly experienced pioneer art therapist”.