Originally from Europe and now based in Houston (TX), Dr. Marie Deschamps, PhD, ATR-P, LPC-Associate, is a multilingual art therapist, researcher, artist, and digital health innovator whose work weaves together expressive therapies, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence in healthcare. Drawing from intercultural and interdisciplinary perspectives, she explores how creative expression, embodied knowledge, and symbolic meaning can expand the ways patients communicate lived experiences of illness, distress, and healing.

Her clinical and research work spans psycho-oncology, palliative care, pediatric psychology, addiction recovery, and grief work. She is the creator of ICanFeel, a digital expressive health platform currently in clinical trial at MD Anderson Cancer Center that investigates how image-making, voice, narrative, and metaphor may function as meaningful forms of health data within precision medicine and patient-centered care.

A strong advocate for intercultural dialogue, she is a Visiting Scholar at The New School University in New York, North America Regional Director for the International Association for Creative Arts in Education and Therapy (IACAET), and part of the leadership team of Expressive Arts Without Borders. She mentors emerging researchers, trains future art therapists across Latin America through the Instituto Mexicano de Psicoterapia de Arte, and serves as a reviewer for the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association.

Marie is a mother to Emilio and Matteo, and uses art to document life in its intimate, relational, and transitional dimensions. She believes artists have an essential role to play in helping others navigate the liminal spaces of existence and in creating meaning, connection, and beauty through experiences of change, grief, and mortality.

Chapter 16: Embodying grief, celebrating death: An art therapy approach

Marie Deschamps and Valeria Koutmina

To connect with Marie, visit her website: www.curiousarttherapy.com.