I talk about it a lot in various places, the way art heals the artist and often heals the observers of the finished work as well. I talk about it so much that it starts to sound cliché: yes, art heals in myriad ways. What else is there to say about it?

But this is me and there’s always more to say. 

As I was contemplating this prompt I thought about how nonlinear and unpredictable the process of healing can be. How  healing is one of the great spiritual mysteries.

Take, for example, two apparently contradictory approaches to healing through art: catharsis, and comfort. 

There’ve been times when what I needed most was to spill my pain all over the creative process. Cutting up photos and gluing the strips to watercolor paper, shards of all the things that had hurt me and were hurting me in the moment put on display in stabby, uneasy configurations. Writing angsty poetry and short stories with painful endings. There were times when this kind of art making was the only outlet for my distress, and the final product didn’t matter as much as the process. Sometimes I did share the work that came from this process: often I regretted it. Not because the results weren’t good: sometimes they were, and sometimes they weren’t. I regretted it because sharing these cathartic pieces opened up my deepest wounds for public consumption, subjecting them to criticism and sometimes scorn. Sharing my cathartic pieces often resulted in new hurts. 

Of course, this was my own experience, and shouldn’t be taken to mean no one should share their cathartic pieces of art. I think there’s an important place for uncomfortable, painful art in the world. But not every artist will find value in sharing their pain this way, and it’s important to understand how you are affected by such sharing.

And there are drawbacks to translating your pain into art. I’ve experienced it myself, especially with writing: at a certain point, spilling pain into creativity morphs into wallowing. It might be creative wallowing. It might even be beautiful wallowing. But sometimes, repeatedly exploring our pain through creative work begins to inhibit our healing and keep us trapped in obsessive hurt. There’s no shame in it: life is hard, and healing is hard, and we’re all just doing our best. Sometimes we can’t pull ourselves out of it. But it’s something to be aware of, and know if we need to interrupt the pain spiral in some way before we damage ourselves beyond repair.

What seems (at least to me) to be the opposite of cathartic art making is taking comfort in the creative process. I can’t count the times I’ve sat down with my art supplies, feeling upset or overwhelmed or grief stricken, and found the simple process of stitching, knitting, or paper crafting untied my emotional knots and soothed my jagged nerves. Often the comfort of the creative process is apparent in the energy of the piece, a reminder to me of the solace of art making, and sometimes even giving a moment of peace to those who view the work. These days, I mostly prefer this approach, but it doesn’t make it more valid than any other.

And even this approach can have its drawbacks. Comfort creativity can easily become a tool of toxic positivity. It’s possible to inhibit the creative process – and the healing process – with a “high vibes only” approach. Sometimes we need to scream into the void. Sometimes we need to express our agony. If we’re denying ourselves that need, both our art and our mental health will suffer.

Of course this is all an oversimplification. Life rarely sorts itself into tidy boxes of this or that, and it’s absolutely possible to find both catharsis and comfort in the same act of creativity, along with countless other effects. And like I said: healing is a mystery. I figure we all have to try everything to see what works. And sometimes we don’t really know what heals us, we just start feeling better, and that’s beautiful too.

Questions to ponder:

Can you name any creative works by others – of any kind, from visual arts, to the written word, to music – that have had profound healing effects on you?

Can you name any times when the act of creating had profound healing effects on you?

If so, what approach(es) did you take?

How does your mental health affect your creativity? For example, do you find it harder to create when you are unhappy? Or do you do your best work when life gets more difficult?

Are there methods or media you would like to explore for the purpose of finding healing through art? If so, could you try them now? If you can’t, what would you need to do to begin this exploration?

Further Reading:

I won’t always recommend further reading, but on the topic of art and healing I highly recommend The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Photo by Riho Kitagawa, courtesy of Unsplash.

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