The Life of a Depressed Artist
What happens when you struggle to do the things that feed your soul and bring you joy? For an artist, creating art is like breathing. It’s essential. It’s how we develop an understanding of the world around us and how we communicate and express ourselves in a way that makes sense to us. So, being unable to create is like cutting off an essential part of ourselves. It can cause depression, but what happens if it’s depression and chronic illness that makes it difficult to impossible for us to be able to create to begin with? It can become a vicious cycle that feeds a deeper depression and loss of self. That’s what I have been struggling with for a long time. It’s not easy to admit it or talk about it. It’s taken lots of therapy to even recognize it in myself, and sadly, understanding what is happening doesn’t automatically fix the problem.
I’ve been working with my therapist on this complex issue for a while and trying to find a healthy, sustainable way back to my art. It’s an ongoing process. Last year, around this time, I thought I had broken through, and I started creating a piece that was a bit darker, moodier and expressed my true self better than the happy little flowers I had been trying to force myself to create. For a while, all was going well, but then, without really understanding what was happening, another block appeared. The frustrating thing about doing the work to uncover creative blocks is that they are often layered. You move past one layer, and suddenly, another new layer appears, requiring more work to get through it.
“Working through depression and creative blocks is like peeling back the layers of an onion... there’s inevitably another layer and a whole lot of tears.”
When I look back at some of the self-portraits that I’ve created over the years, I see the depression that I didn’t notice at the time staring back at me. It’s obvious now, but when I created these I just tried to capture what I saw in the mirror. Clearly, I captured the depression that I struggled to accept in myself at the time. Creating art has always been about expression for me, so it’s not a surprise that I was capturing my depressed mood in these self-portraits. This is why my process is so cathartic when I create from a place deep within, and why it feels so unsatisfying when I only try to make pretty things.
My most recent artwork, which I started last year, was not a direct self-portrait, instead, it’s a self-portrait of my mood. I delved deep within to a place where images make sense and from where I struggle to describe what I’m feeling in words. The series was conceived as a way for me to express how I feel visually, but I think I got stuck because I started to put too much weight on the finished painting being ‘beautiful’ or ‘perfect’. I feared it would not be what I needed it to be. In other words, I feared failure. Not failure from an outside source, but failure of my expectations. I started putting too much weight on the finished product instead of just focusing on the creative process and allowing the expression to flow out of me. Ultimately, I needed to let go and allow it to become what it needed to become!
So here I am a year later with yet another unfinished artwork on my easel. Photos popping up from a year ago on this day remind me just how long it’s been since I started it. Reminding me how long it’s been since I thought I had finally broken through my creative block and reconnected with the part of me that’s been missing. I’m finally realizing that it’s missing again, or at least not all of it was truly found. I’m unsure which, but I know I’m feeling the loss deeply again. I’m feeling like I can’t breathe. Feeling like a part of me is missing, and I can’t figure out how to get it back.
So, where do I go from here? I need to find my way back to my art. I need to give myself grace and let go of the need for my finished artwork to be anything other than the result of allowing myself to create freely and without expectation. I must find the courage to pick up my paintbrush and paint. I need to focus on the process and the creative flow because that’s when I do my best and most authentic work. That’s what I need to be doing, but understanding what I need to do and doing it are very different challenges. I must find a way to allow my creative process to take over and not overthink, over-plan, or place expectations on the finished painting. I need to find my way back to my art and find myself in my art again because only then can I truly start breathing again. Writing this all out has been a helpful step in allowing my creative voice to be heard over all the internal and external noise, and I’m hopeful that I can take more helpful steps down my creative path soon.
