Content warning: this article contains discussions about mental health.
Art can be a balm for the soul. There are scientific studies dedicated to showing the positive effects art can have on those suffering with mental or physical health conditions. Art helps to heal. Making art, consuming art, it all can aid in working through complex feelings and difficult situations. We make art to express ourselves. It does work, I've felt it myself. But what happens when the scale tips too far? What happens when you start to believe that the only way you can make good art is by using your pain and suffering as inspiration?
I have always been a creative person. As I wrote in one of my previous articles, I've been positively knee deep in artistic activities my entire life. When I was a child, I made art freely. There wasn't any pressure for it to be good and my self worth wasn't tied to my creations. I wrote happy stories about princesses, I painted pretty landscapes, I pranced around in glittery costumes for my annual dance show. It felt as easy as breathing, I did all of these things because they were fun. It's hard, though, when your art eventually needs to be graded in an educational setting.
I got the first taste of this during secondary school. It felt natural for me to choose artistic GCSEs because that’s what I was interested in. One of my classes, Fine Art, was led by a particularly difficult teacher. With hindsight, I understand the kind of work he was trying to get us to do. At the time, I was confused. I didn’t get why I needed to try and draw a photorealistic sketch of a chocolate bar. I wanted to use my own personal artistic flair and taste. I simply wanted to create a colourful, pop-art style painting. I didn’t understand that if I wanted to be a better artist and to progress fruitfully in my course, I needed to learn the basic principles of drawing and painting like depth perception, shadows, and tonal quality. But I didn’t want to be boxed in. It made no sense to me that my approach to art needed to be judged and graded, moulded into something that wasn’t true to myself. I wanted to make without creative restrictions. One day in the future, I learnt what it meant to make art without such boundaries.
When I was in my second year of university, studying Drama, we finally got given the creative reins to devise our own solo performances from scratch. One of the options we had was to create autobiographical work that draws from our own experiences. We were given a homework task to keep a creative diary for a week about what we had done during the day. For many of us, autobiographical work seemed like a good idea. To me, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to express my feelings.
At this time, I was in somewhat of a precarious state in terms of my mental health. I was in the midst of processing a traumatic event, and I had barely begun healing from it. I knew that drawing upon a life experience in my work could be cathartic, so I followed the autobiographical route and created a piece of performance art that artistically laid out what I’d experienced. I wasn't the only one. I knew from previous cohorts that this was somewhat of a norm, sharing your traumatic experiences with little consideration for your audience, and most importantly yourself.
I can say that, although I would do things differently and make alternative creative choices now, I am proud of what I devised with the resources and knowledge I had at the time. I'd created a video projection that used a blend of clips from my life and elsewhere, accompanied by a voiceover I'd recorded. I performed improvised contemporary movement in the space, extending and contorting my body in whatever way felt necessary in the moment. It was poetic. It was both comforting and jarring. I felt every moment of it and I didn't get through my rehearsals or assessment without crying. I'd exposed dark parts of myself and my life to a group of peers that I didn't know well. At the time, it felt like a release, like a weight off my shoulders. It was, in its own way, a part of my healing process. To this day, it remains to be the highest graded piece of work in my university career. On our degree, this particular grade was unheard of. It was a rare thing to happen, and for that I consider myself very lucky and grateful. However, this ended up being a slippery slope into bad territory.
You see, I'd internalised the culture that had been created at university. I'd identified a pattern: divulge something personal, get an excellent grade. I'd seen it with others, too. A competitive nature in our cohort started to bubble away, I could feel it in the sneers of other students around me. "Don't focus too much on this grade when you make other work during your degree", one of my lecturers told me. I tried, I really did. But it was an itch at the back of my mind. How could I possibly do even better than my best grade? Even if it's by one mark, I must beat my record.
At this moment in my life, I regret the person I became. The worst parts of myself came out to play. The competitiveness of the degree's culture got to me. I was pushing people away, and pushing myself too hard. I caught myself thinking that my pain was an endless well that I could draw from for my art. My mental health was suffering at the perceived pressure I felt, I realise now that this pressure came from nobody but myself. Although doing this performance was helpful, it also hindered my ability to heal and process privately. Expressing these personal details only made me relive difficult moments in my life, in front of a class full of people who weren't equipped to deal with such subject matters. It wasn't right of me, or any of us, to use this class as a quasi-therapy session.
In my third year, I followed this success up with a second solo performance. In comparison, it was dire. It was essentially the same as before. All of the components were there, with a slightly different, lesser appearance. Once again, I'd created a video projection with a voiceover. I was doing improvised movement, only this time it was much more static and it involved me peeling an orange and turning it into pulp with my bare hands. With the text, I'd dug deeper into the trauma. Compared to the poetry of my last performance, this one contained metaphors that were completely on the nose. This performance was raw and unfiltered, uncomfortable and excessive. It made me feel too vulnerable and exposed. The grade I got was still good, but it was nowhere near what I'd got before.
I never managed to beat my original grade, which felt like such a punch to the gut at the time. It was made worse by the fact that friends of mine had managed to beat my best grade. It felt like the world had crumbled around me. I got so caught up in this toxic way of thinking. I should have been putting together a performance and asking myself: how can I apply theory and academic readings to my creation to make it an engaging and informed piece of performance art? Instead, I was asking myself: what parts of my life can I mine for content? What personal memories can I explore next? How much more of myself can I expose to get a good grade? How far am I willing to go to beat my personal best?
I underestimated the long term impact this experience at university would have on me. I became a perfectionist in my work and in my life. Academic pressure and creative pressure became intertwined. Over the past few years, I've been working through this jumble of mess and letting go of my perfectionist tendencies. I’m trying to find joy in being artistic again. I'm much more able to create without the pressure of it needing to be 'good', but sometimes it's hard to let go of that mindset. I find myself falling into old habits. Far from the days of making art about princesses, my art frequently has darker themes and ideas. I still find myself searching for something painful within me to offer artistic inspiration.
But, I'm coming to the realisation that pain and suffering does not equal 'good' art. We’ve all heard of the ‘tortured artist’ trope. I’ve definitely rolled my eyes at the idea. But having experienced it myself, I can empathise with anyone who is struggling in that way because I understand how a person can come to be haunted by their creativity. However, it isn’t a healthy way to view art. Art can be joyful and positive. It can come from a place of love and be the most wonderful creation you've ever pulled out of yourself. You don’t need to be mentally unwell to make good art, and thinking in such a way only glamourises mental illness. Art doesn't need to be all doom and gloom to mean something. It doesn't even have to mean anything. Art can just be.
I used to suffer for my art, but I'm far less interested in putting myself in that situation anymore. Ultimately, it isn't healthy or helpful. Art will always be a place of catharsis for me, but only when the time is right. Rather than trying to create from pain, I create from wherever I am in a given moment. If pain comes through in my creations, so be it. But I know now that I have so much more of me to offer. My art is my hope, my frustration, my excitement, my confusion, my playfulness, my regret, my gratitude, my fury, my strength, my uncertainty, my empowerment. My art is my love. My art is my heart and mind. My art is all of me.
Thank you for this piece. I didn’t do an arts degree but I noticed this in the spoken word scene when I used to take part in slams. I could always tell who would win based on what bad/traumatic thing they revealed in their poems. I found it hard to watch and not a great encouragement of art itself. I always felt there should be a resident therapist waiting on the sidelines for all these revelations and the impacts of sharing them to an audience often without much reaction or validation.