How to Become an Art Therapist: The Real Path, Start to Finish
Maybe you're the person friends come to when things fall apart, and also the person with paint under their nails. At some point you start to wonder whether those two things could be one job. They can — it's called art therapy. And becoming an art therapist is a longer, more clinical road than most people expect when they first look up how to become one.
So here's the honest version: what the work actually is, the degree and the hours and the license it takes, how long it really runs, and how to tell — before you give it years — whether it's your path or not.
One useful truth up front: art therapy is therapy first and art second. If you love making things but the therapy part feels like the price of admission, this path probably isn't the right fit. The people who get through the training and stay are the ones with a real pull toward clinical work — who'd want to sit with someone in their hardest hour whether or not there was paint on the table.
What an art therapist actually does
An art therapist is a trained mental-health clinician who uses art-making as a way into the work — not an art teacher, and not someone running a craft class for calm.
In practice you hold the same ground any therapist holds: assessment, treatment planning, clinical theory, ethics, working with trauma, anxiety, depression, grief, eating disorders, kids and families and groups. The difference is the room. You give people materials — charcoal, clay, paint, collage — and let what's hard to say show up in their hands first, then in words. The image becomes something you both look at together. Process over product; the mess is often the point. It's what art therapy actually looks like in the room.
Art therapists work in hospitals, schools, community clinics, prisons, hospice, eating-disorder programs, and private practices like ours. Across all of it, the art is a tool. You're a clinician who happens to work through images instead of only through talk.
Is this actually your path?
Before the degrees and the hours, the real filter: you have to want to be a therapist.
Plenty of people land here because they love art and want to help — a good start, and not enough. Art therapy training is clinical training. You'll study psychopathology, human development, group theory, CBT and DBT and psychodynamic approaches, trauma-informed and anti-oppressive practice, assessment and diagnosis. You'll sit in supervision and have your blind spots named out loud. If you only want to make art, you'll be miserable. If you want to do the whole of therapy and you think best with your hands, keep reading.
Therapy is hard. Art therapy can feel weird at first — for your future clients and for you. Both are worth it. That's the job.
It's not just a master's degree
Here's where a lot of guides oversimplify. Becoming an art therapist isn't "get a master's, done." The master's is the middle of the path, not the end. The full arc:
a bachelor's degree (with art and/or psychology behind you)
an accredited master's in art therapy
two to three years of supervised clinical hours after that
national certification — and a state license to practice
Skip any one and you can't really practice as an art therapist. Let's take them in order.
Step 1 — The degree
Bachelor's first. You don't need a specific major, but you'll need two things on your transcript before a master's program will take you: studio art credits (often around 18, plus a small portfolio) and introductory psychology credits (often around 12). Plenty of people arrive with a psych degree and an art minor, or the reverse, and some take post-bacc classes to fill the gaps.
Then the master's in art therapy. This is the core requirement — a two-to-three-year graduate degree, usually an MA or MS in art therapy. Look for programs accredited through the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP) and recognized by the American Art Therapy Association — accreditation is what makes you eligible for certification later, so it isn't optional. A solid program runs around 60 credits and includes a supervised practicum and internship: real client hours while you're still in school.
Can you become an art therapist without a degree?
Short answer: no — not as a licensed, practicing art therapist. You can absolutely use art in supportive, community, or coaching settings without the title. But to call yourself an art therapist, work clinically, take insurance, and be licensed, the accredited master's is non-negotiable. If a path promises the title without it, be skeptical.
Step 2 — Supervised clinical hours
Graduating is where the next phase starts. To earn the national credential you complete a stretch of post-graduate supervised clinical experience — direct client-contact hours, logged under a qualified supervisor. Depending on how full-time you work, that's roughly two to three years, sometimes longer.
This is the part that surprises people. The degree qualifies you to start; the hours are how you actually become one. You're working as a therapist the whole time — usually employed, often underpaid — while a supervisor signs off on your growth.
Step 3 — Certification and licensure
Two different things, and you usually want both.
Certification (national). The Art Therapy Credentials Board (ATCB) grants the credentials:
ATR (Registered Art Therapist) — master's plus your supervised hours.
ATR-BC (Board Certified) — the ATR plus passing the national board exam. This is the standard most employers look for.
Licensure (state). Here's where it gets state-dependent — and where a lot of the confusion online comes from.
Why the path differs on the East and West coasts
There's no single national license to practice art therapy. Each state decides how it regulates the work, and the difference is real:
Some states license creative arts therapists specifically. New York is one: you become an LCAT — Licensed Creative Arts Therapist — through the State Education Department, a master's-level clinical license that lets you diagnose and practice independently.
Other states have no dedicated art therapy license, so art therapists get licensed as counselors instead — an LPC, LPCC, or LMHC depending on the state. On the West Coast, California is the classic example: no standalone art therapy license, so art therapists typically credential as an LPCC or LMFT and practice art therapy within that scope.
So "how to become an art therapist" genuinely has a different answer in Albany than it does in Los Angeles. Before you choose a program, look up the license in the state you actually want to work in — and make sure your program meets that state's requirements.
How long does it really take?
Honestly? Plan on seven to nine years from the start of college: about four for the bachelor's, two to three for the master's, and one to two of supervised hours and exams after that. If you already hold a relevant bachelor's, you're looking at four to six years from here.
It's a big commitment. There's no shortcut that keeps the license intact, and the people who try to rush it usually end up redoing a step. Better to know the real number now.
What it pays — and what it costs you
The honest concession again: this is meaningful work that isn't paid like it. Art therapists are often grouped with recreational therapists and counselors in salary data, and reported medians tend to land around $50,000–$60,000, with a wide range — lower starting out and in nonprofit or community settings, higher with a license, years in, or in private practice. Demand for mental-health clinicians is growing, and the credential travels across a lot of settings, so the work is there.
Weigh that against the cost of the degree and the lean years of supervised hours and you get the real math. People don't choose this path to get rich. They choose it because sitting with someone while they make the thing they couldn't say is, for the right person, work worth doing for thirty years.
The path in New York, specifically
Since this is where we practice — Greenpoint, Brooklyn — here's the local version. In New York you're working toward the LCAT (Licensed Creative Arts Therapist) through the NY State Education Department, Office of the Professions: an accredited master's, supervised experience, and a limited-permit period where you practice under supervision before you're fully licensed. It's a clinical license, which is part of why creative arts therapy is taken seriously here.
It's also the path the clinicians on our own team walked. We're a practice of therapists who make things too — clinically trained first, creative by nature — and we're honest that the road here was long. You can meet the therapists in our practice if you want to see where it leads.
A reality check before you start
If you're still reading and still in, that's a good sign. A short, honest checklist:
you want to be a therapist, not only an artist who helps
you're okay with years, not months
you can sit with discomfort — yours and other people's — without rushing to fix it
you don't need the art to be good; you need it to be true
Therapy is hard. Art therapy can feel weird at first. Both are worth it — and if that makes you lean in rather than away, you might be exactly the kind of person this field needs.
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Yes — an accredited master's in art therapy (or counseling with an art therapy specialization) is required to be certified and licensed. You can use art in non-clinical, community settings without it, but not as a practicing art therapist.
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Roughly seven to nine years from the start of college: ~4 (bachelor's) + 2–3 (master's) + 2–3 (supervised hours and exams). About four to six years if you already hold a relevant bachelor's.
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Reported medians generally fall around $50,000–$60,000, with a wide range by setting, region, license, and experience. It climbs with licensure and private practice; it's lower in entry-level and nonprofit roles.
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Training and scope overlap heavily — both are master's-level mental-health clinicians. The art therapist is additionally trained to use art-making as a clinical tool, and in many states holds a creative-arts-therapy credential (like New York's LCAT).
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No. You need comfort with materials and process, not talent or a fine-art background. Your clients won't need to be "good" either — that's rather the point.
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Some master's programs offer hybrid or online coursework, but the practicum, internship, and supervised hours have to happen in person with real clients. Fully-online, no-clinical paths don't lead to licensure.
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An accredited master's, supervised post-graduate clinical hours, national certification (ATR / ATR-BC through the ATCB), and the license your state requires (for example, LCAT in New York).
