The purpose of this study is to explore the experience of individuals who have lost a parent in their adolescence as expressed through metaphoric art processes. This study used phenomenological methodology as a means of collecting and analyzing the data. A review of the literature included information on the process of bereavement and outcomes of bereavement, the developmental goals of normal adolescence, the effect of general bereavement and parental bereavement on adolescent development, psychological interventions with bereaved adolescents, art therapy theory, and the use of art therapy and metaphor with this population.Three healthy participants, two female and one male, of different ethnicities participated in this study. They were asked to respond to a demographic questionnaire, create four pieces of artwork, and participate in an open-ended responsive interview in order to capture an in-depth description of their experience of losing a parent in their adolescence as expressed through the metaphoric art process.A phenomenological data analysis process yielded composite essential structures that seem to suggest that that all three participants have similar experiences in six key areas. All three participants indicated that they felt a pervasive sense of loss and a sense of missing something in their lives. They also reported having difficulty communicating their experience at the time of their respective parent’s death, describing this experience as feeling jumbled, mixed, and chaotic. Similarly, they had difficulty choosing images inthe art making process that represented the complexity of their feelings at the time of the death. Each of the participants also reported efforts to move past the feelings and thoughts they had at the time of the death, as well as the influence that time has on their ability to express these thoughts and feelings. Finally, the data for all three participants seems to suggest that the process of creating the artwork about the death recreated the cognitive and emotional experience of their parent’s death. In this way, the artwork can be used to help individuals process their bereavement, thus lending itself to application in the clinical art therapy field.M.A., Creative Arts in Therapy -- Drexel University, 200
