Donna Lewis

Donna Lewis – De Lew Designs Australia
I have been a creative person all my life and fortunate enough to have some very supportive, encouraging, enabling, family members and friends surrounding me who are also great at giving honest constructive criticism. As well as being a visual artist I am also a milliner, commercial artist, Registered nurse and Nursing teaching. I have also been a diversional therapist and have found that combining all of my knowledge and skills I have a lot to offer to many people creatively.
As a visual artist I work using lots of different mediums being, but not limited to:
Painting / Drawing: Oils, Acrylics, Water colour, pencil, charcoal, watercolour pencils, oil pastel
Wearable art: wool, felt, fabric, fur felt, silk, sinamay, parasisal straw, jinsin, acrylic skins,
resin art, feathers, beads, wire
Sculpture: wood, steel, Aluminium
The importance of being creative, (and fortunate to have had many and varied experiences and skills), was amplified for me while being a diversional therapist working with the elderly and Psychiatric patients as well as a Registered Nurse and more recently when one of my gorgeous daughters sustained a brain injury and found comfort and release by way of her art and creativity. My daughter has been able to tap into a skill that she did not know she possessed and it has made her recovery nothing short of amazing and inspirational. My husband who suffers from PTSD depression and anxiety due to work also gains solace in being creative, mostly through metal fabrication and metal art as well as woodwork.
I too have found comfort and healing in my creative pursuits after suffering a mild stroke, I returned back to teaching nursing after 5 months of recovery and am producing my best ever artwork with a new attitude, enthusiasm and thankfulness. I have witnessed through my years of Nursing and diversional therapy immense enjoyment, pleasure and healing by introducing and nurturing visual arts in our health / care facilities and am determined to ensure that people are offered this type of therapy as part of their holistic care. Whether I am teaching or enabling people to be creative themselves or they are receiving enjoyment from watching me create or finding their own meaning in the pieces I create makes no difference to me as long as their health is being enriched by art and the creative process.
My art is experimental and I like to push the boundaries and limits of the different mediums I am using. I create to satisfy my own needs initially and if people enjoy what I produce and they get sense of meaning from it themselves well I have achieved what I set out to do.
I enjoy sharing my skill and knowledge and receive immense pleasure from watching people I teach different art techniques too connect with the piece that they have just completed. I benefit from the process as do they.
I call my form of art, therapeutic art or arts health, I envisage it being hung in health care facilties to enable people to escape their pain, trauma and worries by being absorbed and cocooned in the piece I have created.