WHO WE ARE
Our Mission
Our mission is to provide a supportive environment for individuals to
REFLECT, EXPRESS, and EMPOWER self,
while building resilience and exploring the intuitive art process.
Extraordinary Experiences
We visit trauma-impacted communities.
We offer youth and adults intuitive art enrichment in
assisted living facilities, youth detention facilities,
community centers, and schools.
We create exhibitions of artists' work to advocate for the
needs of at-risk elderly and at-risk youth populations.
Our Core Beliefs
Everyone is an artist.
Everyone experiences pain.
Everyone has the ability to heal.
Art heals.
Our Team
Cynthia Gahan is an artist, a teacher, a mother of three, a volunteer, a mental health advocate, and a certified life coach. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1998. She has been teaching for 18 years, and has become a strong mental health advocate; currently serving on the Seattle Children’s Hospital Psychiatry Family Advisory Board, and teaching for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Cynthia founded Heart Art Healing in 2019 after years of volunteering free art classes to incarcerated youth and elderly residents in assisted living facilities. Her classes are infused with Dialectical Behavior Therapy concepts, self-reflection and self-expression.
She is also a Certified First Aid Arts Responder & Group Facilitator. First Aid Arts equips trauma care providers with arts-based tools and training.
Cynthia Gahan believes in the healing power of art and aims to spread the practice to larger communities to promote empowerment and healing for all.
Cynthia Gahan
Founder
Helen attends our Visual Art Journaling program at the Issaquah Senior Center and Verdant Health Commission, documents the work being done there, and provides HAH with organizational support.
I’ve always loved being creative. My creative outlet was photography —flowers, trees, nature.
However, in my career, I was a Production Manager. It’s a very linear job. There are steps that need to be followed to get to the end product. So, the creative side got pushed down.
Volunteering with Heart Art Healing has allowed me to use my workplace skills, in support to Cynthia, AND totally let my creative side come out.
Another plus are the great people I have met.
Helen Doty
Program Associate
Heart Art Healing is an Associated Program of Shunpike (TAX ID# 91-2138554), the 501(c)(3) non-profit agency that provides independent arts groups in Washington State with the services, resources, and opportunities they need to forge their own paths to sustainable success.
We are so grateful for the past and present support of these amazing organizations.
