The pain of losing her father at a young age inspired one graduate to try to help heal others through art.
Keeley Graham, of Cradlehall, Inverness, who graduated from Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen with a BA (Hons) in photographic and electronic media yesterday, was only nine when her dad died.
The experience set the course for her future – she currently volunteers with Childine and will begin voluntary art therapy work at Woodend Hospital in September.
The 21-year-old said: “I went through bereavement counselling when my dad passed away. I got quite heavily involved in it, and started helping out there myself.
“My sister Becky, who is now 19, had art therapy and she told me how helpful it was for her when we were going through that. She was seven at the time.
“I haven’t always known this is what I wanted to do. I just want to help others and I think this is how I can.”
Miss Graham, who intended to specialise in painting, decided to switch track after her first year at Gray’s because she felt photography was “a mirror to the real world”.
The former Milburn Academy pupil aims to volunteer in art therapy for a time, before pursuing a postgraduate course in the subject.
“I want to be able to use art, which has been so prominent within my life, to help others heal,” she said.
“I had always wanted to do art, it has always been my safe place. It was a way for me to control a world that I otherwise felt I had no control over.
“When I was younger you wouldn’t find me playing with dolls or cars, I was always around the playdough making something, or with a pencil in my hand.”