I have experienced the presence of fairy tales throughout my artistic career. I believe that they offer an extraordinary facility through which we can view the human relationship between others and the environment, especially those of the unknown. They have the ability to suspend disbelief in the existence of imaginative worlds full of the evocative potential of magic and mystery, yet through their adventures convey some of the most important guides for surviving life. They remain some of the most well known and yet little understood types of storytelling, perhaps the only type of writing that penetrated my experiences of dyslexia as a child, through their images and the cultural oral tradition that surrounded them. The inspiration for this project began a year and a half ago through working with fairy tale imagery with children as part of my work as an art psychotherapist and has evolved via research I have carried out over the past year, whilst writing and collecting fairy tales in remote parts of Turkey and across the mountains of Transylvania.

The majority of my artistic career has focussed on engaging with the developing creativity of children, encouraging their belief and enthusiasm in their artistic fluency as an equally valuable skill as any other in society. Those experiences have resulted many times in successfully presenting their visions in an adult world and prompting a reflective process that has inspired all. I see this project as developing this further through the process led and empowering activities for the children in ‘Hunting for Fairy Tales of the Yeti’.