April Fitzpatrick, also known as “Pineapple Lady,” is a board-certified art therapist, visual artist and CEO of Pineapples with Purpose LLC, an initiative that expands art therapy to minoritized communities that have been impacted by race-based traumatic stress. April is also the supervisor of an expressive arts therapy program that provides music and art therapy to clients experiencing crisis.
She is most interested in the arts’ role in mental wellness and believes that in order to turn pain into purpose, you must “make room for your crown,” an affirmation that has embedded itself along her art journey. Her art practice marries contemporary abstraction and African influence with experimental narrative to produce paintings and collages that explore object-worlds and life-worlds through the lens of Blackness, racial trauma, oppression and the pineapple.
April’s work has been featured in Black Minds Mag: Issue 2, Art Seen: The Curator’s Salon Magazine and the ART4EQUALITY x LIFE, LIBERTY & THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS exhibition catalog. She has shown work in over 15 cities and recently unveiled a show exploring the impact of racial trauma. Her professional endeavors include being an Arts in Medicine fellow, the city-appointed practicing artist for the Council on Cultural and Arts board of directors, and alum of both the Baldwin for the Arts Residency and New Leaders Council.
April’s principal purpose is to help individuals uncover, assess and externalize challenges that affect their wellbeing. April holds a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Tougaloo College and a Master of Science. in art therapy from Florida State University.