Issue 20 - Writing - Art and Health

As writers, we are very lucky as we have our practice to turn to when life throws us difficult times and we need a place to escape and work it through. Or is the very part of being a writer and its process detrimental to our health?

Silence halts the mending of our body as discussed by Bessel Van Der Kolk in his book The Body Keeps the Score and as artists and writers, we can use our platform, process, and practice to break the silence and start to heal.

Stephen K. Levine further explains ... “The task of therapy is not to eliminate suffering but to give a voice to it, to find a form in which it can be expressed. Expression is itself transformation; this is the message that art brings. The therapist then would be an artist of the soul, working with sufferers to enable them to find the proper container for their pain, the form in which it would be embodied.”

Here we have a nice selection of articles poems and critic on Art and our Health…

To be an artist is to create your own medicine.

By Anonymous…

This piece is talking about people that are born to be artists but don’t know it, that create expressions of emotions, ideas, and visual narratives, (not crafts) we artists are in a constant state of flux, we love our work, we hate our work, we have brain fog, mental block, and days when things just don’t work. Everyone and his mother love your work to your face, yet they never buy it?? Everyone expects a favour from you or free work, but then in the next breath are asking ‘oh and what do you do for a living?’ When we say ‘I’m an artist they simply smile and think you’re just sitting at home watching Netflix and eating…

These are just some of the many things as artists we experience, no one stops to think why or how we became artists in the first place after all it’s not something that is actively encouraged as a career choice in school. I have spoken to and worked with many different artists over the past thirty years, and we have all experienced this.

But we do all have something else in common, we have all been through some kind of trauma, pain, anxiety, health issue, family issue, and these issues have created a need in us to express this in a physical, creative way, we have this urge to express what we are feeling or seeing…

I have also been on a personal and physical journey over this time, with both physical and mental health issues, many times my practice has been my rescue, so when I had a year where creating my art was boarder line impossible at times and difficult at others, I felt I needed an escape shoot, or to simply fall down the rabbit hole and never come back up.

My mental health was at a low, the urge to create was like this tight grasping feeling withinside my body, I physically ached from the inside out not having the ability, space, or time to create was making me feel worse!

I had never really felt this way before when I could not create, this was new and not very nice, this was as if the rug had been pulled from under me, and I just kept falling. That is when I realised that art is what was getting me through this period in my life and that feeling carried on until I finally could sit in a space, in my space and have time to slowly unwind this feeling into my practice, and even this took time, a time where I had to dig deep into my feelings, cull the trash that came through, and the negativity of doubt, the doubt that I could create again, the doubt that I could think clearly again, and the doubt I would receive from others that simply do not understand the reasons I am an artist, I have always been an artist, and always will be…

Many artists of the past and present have this struggle, art is not a fanciful, self-indulgent hobby. I personally believe an artist is born, to be an artist, it may take them on a journey to get there but for them to be an artist is to create work that is their medicine, it is their way of expelling the demons or bringing attention to the wrongs in the world, to narrate the world around them to help them understand it and others should they wish to be a part of that journey…

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Art for health’s sake

by

our resident writer Michaela Hall

Art in all forms – in its expression, can often be seen to help us deal with our emotions, especially when it comes to private matters such as health. However, it may seem worlds apart from the scientific solutions that we seek for our health. The age-old gap between the scientific and creative, the logical and emotional is still present. So what happens, when artists use their creativity as a means to create a fusion with science and create a conversation around our health?

This is something that American artist Elizabeth Jameson focuses on throughout her practice, using scientific knowledge and medical processes to create colourful and thought-provoking pieces. We’ve all heard of MRI scans, usually something daunting, scary and intrusive. However, Jameson doesn’t see it this way, she sees it as a window into showcasing that imperfections are ok. Jameson uses MRI scans of her own ‘imperfect’ brain to examine what it means to have a ‘perfect’ or ‘imperfect’ body and to facilitate easier and more tangible conversations around what it means to be healthy. Jameson suffers from multiple sclerosis and after being diagnosed she decided to turn the cold and unnerving MRI images she received into colourful, inviting, intriguing and beautiful images that are a fusion of art and science and allow us to have conversations around illness and disability. In Jameson’s painting ‘Self Portrait of the Artist’s Brain’ (2009) electrically bright colours guide our attention to the different parts of the brain and our eye is led around the anatomy like it’s a puzzle for us to work out – fascinating with all of the different intersecting elements. Similarly, in ‘Carousel’ (2013) the beautiful rainbow spectrum of colour and vibrancies demand our attention and draw us in to examine the series of different brain scans in the digital collage.

Another way to create conversation around our health is to find new ways to translate scientific knowledge to fuel everyday advice around how to stay healthy. Sounds like it would be clinical and corporate? Normally it might be. However, in UK based illustrator Hannah Daisy’s work – this isn’t the case at all. The artist creates illustrations that focus on healthcare awareness and mental health awareness amongst other things such as LGBTQAI+ and feminism. The artist has lived through experiences and issues with mental health and illnesses such as endometriosis and PCOS and she uses this to fuel ideas for her work. The artist has also worked as a Mental Health Occupational Therapist so as an individual pretty much personifies the fusion between creativity and science. From 2017-2020 the artist created a hashtag #BoringSelfCare from her Instagram account @makedaisychains that had the aim to gain some control over what self-care actually is day to day. We can often think that self-care has to be doing something huge, like becoming a marathon runner or transforming the way we eat, think or sleep completely. Of course, while this may work for some, this isn’t always the case and it’s often the small things like cooking a nice meal, making sure you get out the house or attending that therapy session you would rather not, that really makes a difference. This is exactly what the artist illustrated, small circular snippets of self-care advice that are both aesthetically beautiful artworks and seriously good advice for looking after yourself. The examples stem from the daily struggles that the artist has experienced in the past due to illness and redefine the scientific advice we may usually receive to realistic, tangible advice to follow. All of these illustrations were eventually made into a Zine which is available for purchase – this really is art for health’s sake.

What both artists successfully achieve in their works is the elevation of creativity to something that can really benefit scientific discussions around healthcare and wellbeing with actual tangible results. By facilitating conversations around disability, what it is to be ‘imperfect’ and how self-care actually works day today for those struggling, the artists are working hand in hand with scientific knowledge to pioneer a new type of visual healthcare advice – for the everyday person who is daunted by medical leaflets and unnerving TV adverts. Of course, the artworks can’t be credited to give any solutions to those in need of advice but what they can do is give a stepping stone to those looking for advice to realise its ok to talk about health – in turn, only having a positive effect on the number of people who seek medical advice. These artists are bridging the gap between art and science with every viewer’s attention they catch and are encouraging those who believe art is for art’s sake, to massively reconsider.

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Creating Creativity – the importance of art to our wellbeing by Matthew Tett

 Bio:

 Matthew Tett is a freelance writer living in Wiltshire. He has been published in Writing in Education, the Cardiff Review, the New Welsh Review, and Ink Sweat and Tears. His short story 'Spun Sugar' was published in the inaugural edition of Liberally. In March 2021, he won Word After Word's mini-memoir prize. He is also the coordinator of StoryTown. Matthew is currently working on his debut short story collection. It’s cliched, maybe, but one can get a lot of comfort from art, be that through visiting galleries, to attending theatre performances, and the written word. I am a freelance writer and educator – and for me, art is integral to the quality of my life, something which I value immensely. Writing, in particular, allows me to make sense of the world.

It goes without saying, really, but since the start of the global pandemic back in early spring 2020, it has become more important than ever for humans to access art to help with emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing. At the start of 2020, irrespective of what lay ahead for the world, I decided to keep a journal for the whole of the year – in the form of a daily (or, in some cases, more than one entry) haiku. I remember how I set myself this creative New Year’s resolution – and stuck to it, even if there were times I didn’t feel like writing a contribution. From 1st January 2020:

 Cool and damp. New Year

Sludge merges with sea, but sand

Always enthuses.

 Quite different, then, to my entry from a month later, when a lady fainted in the theatre seat in front of me:

 She stood, swayed a bit.

Collapsed backwards. On alert.

Probably the height.

 Traditionally, haikus should have a focus on nature – and some of mine do – but my entries were my way of recording short, sharp, sweet memories of the year. Ominously, on 2nd February 2020, I wrote:

 Hand sanitiser

Selling out. We’d best stock up.

Two big bottles now!

Thinking back, I’m not sure if I would have approached the journal-writing differently if I had known we were going to enter a pandemic. It is always interesting to reflect on writing, to consider how it is affected by ‘in the moment thoughts – and how these might have been different in another time, place, or situation.

Theatre-going and visiting art galleries are important to my well-being. It is about being immersed into a different situation, perhaps one which is an escape from reality, or at least a reality different from one’s own. Just recently, I watched The Shark is Broken in London’s West End and really appreciated how the performance (one that is relatively short, with no interval) can take the audience back to a different era – in this case, the 1970s when Jaws was made. I visited the Royal Academy for its delayed Summer Exhibition and loved the ‘journey’ I was taken on: all contemporary art, but pieces so varied in quality, medium, and the conversations they inspired.

 Writing can help me feel less stressed – and, in turn, give me a sense of achievement, which is a massive benefit. Attending a writing workshop a month ago resulted in me producing a prose poem draft – something I would not have thought about before the session. The stimulus for the piece was the workshop – and without it, without the presence of others and the instigation by the facilitator – this wouldn’t have happened. Writing 100-word micro-fiction pieces is also a healthy challenge – and is something that is manageable, certainly not insurmountable, even if it doesn’t progress to competition. For me, all art is good art, regardless of where it ends up.

When the UK entered its first lockdown in March 2020, I spent a considerable amount of time-making cards – something I had not done for a good many years. Thinking back, this was a form of escapism for me at a time when things were so uncertain and challenging. I believe creating these cards was an outlet– and something I am still benefiting from now, over 18 months later. But art can be so many different things. Even for those who do not think they are creative, it can be simple things, such as writing a ‘list’ poem on a mobile phone’s notebook app. Being open to how art can impact on life positively is of a huge benefit – and the more that people are open to giving it a go, the better.

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The creative’s curse

by Gabriella Ranito-Baltazar

https://www.instagram.com/gabriella_baltazar_art/?hl=en

I’ve been thinking recently about our connection with our creativity and how it links to our mental health, especially in my own work and how it has influenced me.  I’ve often thought that if I was one of the lucky ones that had never experienced anxious cycles or never knew what depression really meant, would I still be an artist? If I was an artist would my work be totally different?  

Seems like a lot of overthinking doesn’t it?… but that’s creatives for you, and that’s where we get our strange outlandish ideas from, it’s also where we find ourselves falling down the rabbit hole of spiralling “what if’s” and “what is”. A question I have asked myself in the past a few times in which life would I have rather had? A life without anxiety or a life without art.  Don’t get me wrong, you can definitely have both I’m just not sure if one would begin without the other.

I’m not saying you have to be crazy to be creative, but it definitely helps, more recent studies suggest that there is a definite link between creative people and their mental health, I would presume because we are using the right side of our brain which controls all of our abstract thoughts and emotions and less of the left side which is logical and calculated. Throughout history, we can see many of the greatest artists and musicians struggled with addiction, depression and some just pure obscure behaviours. Take Salvador Dali walking anteaters or Estee lauders obsession with touching people faces, the suicides of Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf and in pop culture the likes of Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse’s addiction and most recently we watch Kanye West’s creative madness unravel through Twitter and interviews. There’s no doubt that there is a link but I also think as a society we glamourize bizarre behaviours and those that died before their time, would we still think the same way about these people if we hadn’t romanticised a tragic story and made it part of their art?

Realistically art is everywhere, and it is everything. From the piece of furniture, you’re sitting on to the piece of technology you’re using, the colour of your walls or your favourite song. It all began with someone who thought a little differently from everyone else, none of those things would exist without those people pushing the boundaries of what was once considered “normal”.  All our favourite songs were written through tears, even the happy ones because nobody knows true happiness without knowing true sadness, it is the yin and yang of life. Which kind of makes everything a little bit more beautiful.

Being creative is having the ability to turn the darkness into light, everything around us has the potential to be something uniquely beautiful. Again, it just emphasises the balance we need in the world and in ourselves, we are allowed to see beauty, but we must also see sadness, we can have love but we also have heartache. Hearing a dripping drainpipe can inspire a song that people listen to for years to come, a crack in a wall can rouse a concept for a painting, a drug-induced dream can inspire a book that becomes someone’s saviour. So which would you rather be? It doesn’t mean that if you’re artistically inclined that you’re plagued by mental illness, just that maybe you can’t be creative without questioning existence once in a while? Because that’s what we do, we question things, we are curious, we are inventors, we make things that bit more magnificent… We are the lucky ones.

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Artist - Kauser Parveen

Description

1 poem relating to the power of therapy. The other poem is about the power of petition.

I came here

I came here
To talk
Talk through my deep dark Thoughts
Talk through my deep dark Suicidal thoughts
You sit across me
Offer me words of comfort Words of encouragement You offer me space
Allow me to be a child Explore
Paint, draw, colour a world
I can draw
The life I have
The life I want
Bridges the gap
Of the journey that is needed.

Armchair warrior

I am who I am
Because of her
She is unafraid
To add her voice
To a revolution
Beyond the doorstep
To add her signature to a petition Her quiet persona

Should not be mistaken For a doormat
She commands attention When necessary

She has a story to tell A voice to be heard
A voice to be added She speaks a language Rich in history

Rich in love
She speaks to be heard
She speaks to be listened to She speaks to instil hope
I am who I am because of her.