Blue. Battered. Brilliant.

Trigger Warning - Mental Health

The Artistic Temperament

Artist:

Noun: a person who creates art using conscious skill and creative imagination.

What comes to mind when you hear that word? If you are like me, and you’re unconsciously controlled by internal systemic stereotypes (a programming glitch we should all be working on er’day guys), then there are probably a few clichéd archetypes that immediately come to the fore. How about, “the starving artist”? Or maybe it’s “the damaged, brooding artist”. I’m going to assume that if you’ve heard either of these terms before, you’re also familiar with what is known as the artistic temperament. This condition afflicts many talented, creative or generally highly intelligent people and has unfortunately lead to the widespread (and admittedly somewhat accurate) view that artistic types are generally isolated, passionate and self-indulgent people. That they are aloof, generally broke usually unpredictable, somewhat pretentious, brilliant and tortured souls.

Though this representation can be restrictive and unfairly applied, some clichés are indeed clichés for a reason. And though not every writer carries around a notepad, just like not every painter has paint splatters all over their clothes and not every creative mind is tortured – there does seem to be a link between creativity and mental illness.

Celebrated Creatives that Struggled With Their Mental Health

1) Van Gogh – the famous post-impressionist painter who created magic by the brushstroke. Using rich colours and brave dense strokes he created worlds, and scenes that to this day still awaken a rare sentiment in people’s hearts. He also cut off his ear and gave it to a woman during a manic episode. He suffered from manic depression, bouts of rage and ended up taking his life long before the world was ready to acknowledge his genius. Inspired by the painting Starry Night, singer and songwriter Don McLean wrote a song about Vincent – about his madness and his brilliance – and I honestly couldn’t word it better if I tried, so give it a listen, but also give some of it a read below.

“Starry, starry night Paint your palette blue and gray Look out on a summer's day With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills Sketch the trees and the daffodils Catch the breeze and the winter chills In colors on the snowy, linen land

Now, I understand what you tried to say to me And how you suffered for your sanity And how you tried to set them free They would not listen, they did not know how Perhaps they'll listen now”

Another painter who struggled with a mental health disorder called Neurasthenia was Edvard Munch. He is well known for his oil painting The Scream - and by looking at it one can get a glimpse into his tortured existence. That being said, he once stated, “Without fear and illness, I could never have accomplished all I have.”

2) Robin Williams – famous for his insane acting talents, comedic genius and inexhaustible ability to make people happy, this man dedicated his life and his career to his artform and touched millions of lives along the way. Though he mostly took on lighthearted, sometimes hysterically funny roles, he struggled with addiction, depression and Lewy Body Dementia – which ultimately caused him to take his own life.

3) Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Chester Bennington, Halsey and Renee Yohe – these five individuals had more than their love of music in common. They also shared the experience of dealing with various mental health issues – from manic depression to bipolar disorder – and this both fueled and f*cked with their careers and lives at one point or another. Their pain demands to be felt through their music but their bravery and unlimited capacity for greatness demands to be acknowledged too!

Through their lyrics, the stories they shared and the way they used what they loved to express parts of themselves that felt unlovable, they truly inspired and continue to inspire people.

4) F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath - ahh, finally, onto the writers! These household names are a source of inspiration for a lot of people (yes, a lot of whom are or were English majors but still...) and they were all exceptional literary pioneers. The Great Gatsby for example (if you’ve only watched the movie, you’ve missed out) is to me, one of the most beautifully written, stylistically intriguing and thought provoking novels about love, human nature and hope, that I have ever read! And people, there’s a reason that it is still being used in High School and University syllabuses – that sh*t is TIMELESS. I mean we are talking about a book that was published in 1925 here, that touched on themes that are still universally relatable to this very day! These insights – and the insights within the work of the other writers on this list – were exceptional, honest and most importantly, were SO WELL written. Well enough to spark a light in people almost a decade later.

And maybe the reason for that is how imaginatively they describe and fictionalize human nature, human error and human sadness as well as unconditional love and unwavering hope. Somebody who has never experienced any bad, would never be able to so powerfully define the good. All of these artists were either depressed, bipolar, paranoid or a combination of the three.

So, what is the connection really, between creativity and mental illness? Is it the price people pay for their brilliance, or is it coincidentally genetic? Is there a scientific explanation out there? It isn’t the case with every creative… so maybe not. But either way, the romanticized correlation continues to exist in people's minds.

The Tumultuous Relationship Between my Depression and my Creativity

When that big black cloud began hanging out over my head for the first time, I embraced it. I opened up my arms and delved into the darkness, without fully realizing what I was so willingly giving in to. I was fifteen and I thought that being sad was kind of cool. It made me different, interesting. I didn’t try to fight it off, I didn’t think to ask for help – instead I turned to some really unhealthy coping mechanisms and effectively f*cked up a solid few years of my life.

I fed the anxiety that woke me up every morning and I savored the control that hurting myself gave me. On my worst days, I would write. Poetry – dark and brooding. I found inspiration within the pain I had trapped in my body and I used it to create rhythmic stanza’s that searched for answers and sometimes allowed me to find them. To this day, I am proud of all the poems I wrote during that time, and I am actually including them in my novel. What I am not proud of however, was how I started to equate my creative writing ability with my sadness.

Everything changed when I went on medication for the first time. I was finally happy, I was finally free! The cloud over my head was evaporated by the sun and with that, the words stopped flowing and the inspiration ebbed. I didn’t write another piece of poetry for the next three years. Then after a while the rainy season returned and I felt myself slipping back into a very dangerous place. This time, I wasn’t interested in indulging it, I wasn’t interested in being “that girl” anymore, and I did one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. I asked for help. Lucky for me, my support system is made up of lovely, reliable, compassionate and fierce people, who all allowed me to lean on them. I strode forward, this time ready to fight for myself!

I flourished in that nurturing environment and learnt more about myself than ever before – about my resilience and capability – and about my talent and passion for writing. So, it was in those months of adjusting to new medication, fighting old demons and finding myself that I birthed my first novel. The muse came and went, but eventually I finished it and thanked the lord for every dark moment that emphasized the light in my life and allowed me to feel so much! So far, I’m fitting pretty well into the stereotypical artistic category, right? Well hey, if the “I have quotes tattooed on my body and I smoke rollie cigarettes sometimes” kind of aesthetic fits, wear it. Anyway, soon after that I managed to get myself back on track once more!

That being said, recently I’ve been struggling. I’ve been a little bit all over the place – anybody who has spoken to me recently will know that I am currently in limbo, practically homeless (albeit by choice and circumstance) and that my mental health seems to be slipping once more. Apparently, I am “emotionally dissociating” and that for me is an extremely terrifying experience. Or I guess it would be, you know, if I could feel things. LOL. For someone who has felt everything so deeply their entire life, it is strange to be suddenly removed from the intensity of it all. As I’ve admitted, I generally fall into the romantic and somewhat problematic archetype of “tortured artist” and create my best work when I am personally very far from okay. But this time is different. I’m completely blocked up artistically and the fact that I even managed to write this piece is a miracle in itself! That is probably why this blog post feels more like an essay than anything else – sorry about that. But still, we push forward!

I guess what I’m trying to show here is that maybe there is no solid link. Maybe creativity is its own force of nature and our moods, talents, mental illnesses or whims have hardly anything to do with it at all. Or maybe they have everything to do with it, but only for some people– I honestly am not sure.

What I do know however, is that I am freaking multidimensional – just like every other complex being on this planet. I recently spoke to a few lovely creatives in my life who struggle with something similar, and found that their creativity was also directly influenced by their mental space BUT that depending on the medium they use, it affects them differently! So a bout of depression can inhibit artistic creativity when it comes to painting but totally inspire writing for some people - and vice versa. I suppose that is because we are all built differently. We all come apart differently and we all put ourselves back together differently and this leads to the ebbing and flowing of specific and personal creative outlets!

If you're an artist who suffers from a mental illness, this is probably something you should think about. Stop beating yourself up for not being able to conquer the writers block when you're depressed. Stop berating yourself for only being able to paint when you're manic. If you can't bring yourself to sing, dance or draw in your current headspace - it doesn't mean you're broken and that your creative juices have run dry! Cut yourself some slack. Experiment using different mediums of expression. Reach out, talk to people. Talk to yourself - remind yourself out loud that you are still brilliant even when you're bruised and battered and continue to work through the blues and on channeling the chaos into creativity.

On another note, please do not think for one second I am trying to compare myself and my talent to that of any of the amazing artists I’ve mentioned previously – that would be ludicrous at this point. But what I am comparing is the struggle I’ve faced and the way it influences my work. What doesn’t falter however, and I think those big aforementioned inspirational names up there might agree, is the passion. Despite any headspace, there is one thing that doesn’t change. Just because I have stopped writing for the moment doesn’t mean I’ve stopped HUNGERING for it. And I’m pretty sure that is what makes it worth it for a lot of people.

So, why write about this and share it publicly, you ask? Well, as someone who is dealing with mental illness and who has the utmost respect for so many battered and blue but brilliant artists, I feel it is my duty to shine a light on subjects like these. To honour people whose lives are complicated, scary and sad but who still manage to create beautiful things. As a writer, I can put my appreciation for their paintings, music, novels, poetry and films into words and attempt capture the essence of the unique and crystalline beauty that they saw in the world and brought to it with their art. And by celebrating their magnificence and their madness we can start to understand each other better.

We can learn from them and treat ourselves with more kindness. We can come to know that mental illness can be limiting, but that it can also open a doorway that leads to absolute clarity and the greatest depth of feeling. We owe that understanding to artists – both the damaged and the whole – and we owe it to ourselves. As for my artistic journey, it is TBC… I’ll keep you updated!

Love, Georgia Rae