Local Artist Profile // Ida Yoked

“The therapeutic benefits of creating and using art in therapy to make positive changes and self discoveries in the life of my patients is fascinating.” Says Ida Yoked, co-founder of Expressive Therapies, an organization that has been around eleven years in Park City, and seventeen in New York City. Expressive Therapies provides individual, group and community based art and music therapy, specializing in hospice, mental health and recovery.  

Ida has an interesting story. She was born in Paris and is a second generation artist. She studied cinematography at Tel-Aviv university in Israel and earned a Masters in Art Therapy from Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in NYC. She currently resides in Park City, serving as the Director of Expressive Therapies Utah where her and her co-founder Tony Ollerton, a music therapist, provide art and music therapies in different settings all over the state.

A self proclaimed experimentalist, Yoked says she is “constantly searching for the right media to express life impression through paintings, sculpture and photography.” You can see in her work, vibrant colors of acrylics are the driving element in the piece. She paints a variety of subjects from abstract to impressionistic styles.

Ida believes in the power of art to improve mental wellness. “Art is a different language that provides a form of communication to interact with people struggling with mental illness,” Yoked expresses. “Not to mention, what pure pleasure it brings people to create and learn art. It can be a life changing experience.”

Four months ago, Yoked decided to try something new and established Artists Plus Utah [website coming soon], an organization that will focus on providing more art therapy services to the mental health community, with the help of art therapists and local artists. More information about this organization will be released soon.

You can see Ida’s vibrant art on display now through the end of April at Townshend’s Tea in Kimball Junction.