The art of escaping paperwork

A New Life: The therapeutic benefits of art prompted a probation officer to dedicate his life to it

A New Life: The therapeutic benefits of art prompted a probation officer to dedicate his life to it. Patricia Weston reports.

It took 17 years for Daniel Cullen to shrug off the mountains of paperwork in his job as probation officer and become a full-time artist.

After studying social work at UCD, Cullen joined the probation services upon graduating. "It was a very challenging and interesting job and definitely a vocation," he says.

"When you work as a probation officer, you have a case load of offenders who are found guilty by the courts and are referred to the probation service. We ran programmes to try to get them employed or we would try to get them involved in drug rehabilitation programmes if they were drug addicts. The job also involved a lot of work in prisons providing a welfare service for the inmates."

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As a probation officer, he maintained a strong interest in art throughout his career. "I incorporated art into my probationary work as a way of communicating with the offenders," he says.

Using art as a tool of communication, Cullen taught art classes to his probation students. "On my very first job placement I worked in Cork and ran cartoon classes as a way of establishing a rapport with the offenders," he says. His interest in art prompted several breaks throughout his 17-year career. "On my first break I took a year out to study art at Dún Laoghaire College of Art and Design. Then, in 1994, I went to England to study art therapy," he says.

He discovered the beneficial effect of art while living, working and studying in England which re-inforced his faith in it as an asset to his work with offenders. "Art has great potential to be therapeutic," he says.

When he moved back to Ireland, he set up art therapy classes in the Bridge programme in Dublin. "The programme dealt with high-risk offenders. They were usually in their late teens or early 20s with a risk of re-offending. So they were given the option by the court to attend this programme and do art therapy and if they re-offended they'd be sent back to prison," says Cullen.

It was while working on the Bridge programme that he realised his love of art was beginning to take precedence over his probationary work. He felt he was working two jobs. "I was doing a lot with the art and felt like I was working in one job teaching art and then another doing the paperwork in probation," he says.

He began to feel immobilised in his career until two devastating events prompted him to dramatically change jobs and leave probation. "I felt like I was in a cul-de-sac and that there was no future in what I was doing, then my mother died very suddenly and my brother died also. This accelerated a change for me and I began to establish my priorities and I didn't go back to probation after compassionate leave," he says.

"People tell me I was very brave to leave my job, but when you're dealing with bereavement you re-evaluate such things in your life as your career. When the time comes to make a change, you just have to do it and move on."

Working as a ceramic sculptor is totally different from working in probation for Cullen. "I'm up to my elbows in clay all day as opposed to the mountains of paperwork I had to deal with every day. Now I don't do any administration work because I can't stand it. The security of the regular pay packet isn't there anymore but being in the studio and working with my hands and being independent in an environment I really like makes up for that, it's great," he says.

Cullen creates large figurative work that draws on his interest in medieval painting and sculpture. "I create work for both indoor and outdoor locations. I take private commissions from both corporate bodies and the general public," he says.

Some of his work is scattered around the grounds of the Fingal County Hall in Swords, Co Dublin, a project he created with his wife Una Keeley. He says: "I don't believe in just plonking sculpture in an area, I think there should be a dialogue between the area and the sculpture. When we were commissioned by Fingal County Council to do this assignment, we set about interacting with the local people of Swords before we created the pieces."

They called this project Open Ground because the process of creation was very open with the community. "We developed concepts with the people and gave them a lot of input," he says.

They ran workshops at his studio in Swords where people worked to contribute to the project. The result was a collection of historical ceramic figures.

They also created pods which are exhibited on the first and second landings of the County Hall. "They are seed pods which are a symbol for growth and new beginnings, they hold the dreams and aspirations written on paper by members of the Fingal community, both young and old. They symbolise a communal hope for the future and are a potent reminder of the power of both our individual and collective creativity," he says.

Cullen says he's completely content working as a full-time sculptor and he has no regrets about shrugging off the manacles of the probation service. "Nowadays I feel like I'm in heaven working in my studio. When I made the decision to change careers I thought, I'm going to jump from this boat and if I'm going to jump for the moon then I might as well go for it and jump for the sun."