Core Team

Laurie Zagon is the creator and founder of Southern California-based Art & Creativity for Healing. Its mission to “support emotional healing through art and creative expression for those living with pain, grief, fear or stress” has roots from Zagon’s own difficult childhood. Art was an escape from painful experiences and this early discovery would ultimately serve tens of thousands of adults and children with a variety of life challenges.

A New York native, Zagon earned her undergraduate degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University. For over 14 years, she was a fine art professor at the City University of New York where she taught design, color and light theory, and painting. In 1987, Zagon by chance connected with two Wall Street executives which led to an unforeseen opportunity – expressive art workshops to deal with stress. Zagon realized that if art could relax stressed-out Wall Street executives, she imagined its impact on people going through other adversities such as grief, addiction, or cancer. Later that year, the Art4Healing® method was born.

Zagon moved from New York to southern California in 1989 following the publication, “It’s Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood,” by author and former Laguna Beach resident Dr. Claudia Black. The book about healing from alcoholism and addiction featured thirty-four of Zagon’s paintings – another step in art fostering transformational change.

Art & Creativity for Healing was formed in 2001 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and has since provided the Art4Healing® method of artistic development and expression through more than 35 nonprofit program partners throughout Southern California.