I'm a third generation painter. But unlike my Viennese father and grandmother, I'm the first to dip into a digital tool box, and the first to do art for your sake, and not my own.

My first big encounter with photomontage as a therapeutic medium was when I created a tender series of hand-cut photo collages for my firstborn's bar-mitzvah. This time, in the absence of the "right photos" (that is, endearing shots of Sam posing with family members or friends which simply did not exist), I made them myself from family photos I had in albums. Using this method, I was even able to reunite Sam with his grandmothers, Lola and Ilse, who had since passed away.

Art For Your Sake's true mission was born the day a friend of mine, Anne H, asked if I could take her photos and make from them a talking piece to reconcile her shattered family. Her request was spawned by a traumatic life event- the death of her absentee father. When she and her sibs started going through old photos and memorabilia, all kinds of yearnings and heartache began to surface. Anne intuitively understood that some form of photo therapy might lead to a family reconciliation.

Unlike the process for my bar-mitzvah artwork, therapeutic photomontage employed far more intake and empathy, but also the objectivity, whimsy and chutzpah that only an outsider to the family has permission to explore.

How do people find me? I collaborate with therapists, clergy, social workers, friends and family to lend perspective and healing in a wide range of circumstances involving issues of adoption, emotional growth, homosexuality, bereavement, recovery and end-of-life care. At various times, healing dreamscapes have acted as a peace offering, a reward for positive thinking and a stimulus to jog memory.

Influences? The Surrealists, like Jacques Prevert. The Photo Gestaltists, like Joseph Zinker. The Dadaists who fragmented Gestalt, like Hannah Hoch.

In my previous life I was a copywriter, and in some sense, I'm still in advertising, suspending disbelief and turning things on their head. Only this time, I'm doing it in the service of comfort and joy.

As for the name of my studio, I have my internist to thank. One day, as I lay on the examination table, Dr. Sipkins asked me what was this work I was doing; was it art for art's sake? No, no, no, I said, laughing between palpations. No, Doctor, I said:

"It's art for your sake."