Among the challenges faced by talented and creative people are meaning and emotional health.
Painter Dianne Albin addresses these and other challenges in this excerpt from the book: The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression, by Eric Maisel, PhD.
She writes:
For an artist, it is a driven pursuit, whether we acknowledge this or not, that endless search for meaning.
Each work we attempt poses the same questions. Perhaps this time I will see more clearly, understand something more.
That is why I think that the attempt always feels so important, for the answers we encounter are only partial and not always clear.
Yet at its very best, one work of art, whether produced by oneself or another, offers a sense of possibility that flames the mind and the spirit, and in that moment we know this is a life worth pursuing, a struggle that offers the possibility of answers as well as meaning.
Perhaps in the end, that which we seek lies within the quest itself, for there is no final knowing, only a continual unfolding and bringing together of what has been discovered.
To create, to express the depth and experience of our consciousness of being alive, all the while knowing that death hovers nearby, that is what we do. …
We embrace a life of solitude in order to embrace our creativity. We live outside the mainstream of life and struggle endlessly to survive both emotionally and financially.
And we wonder why do we do this thing that causes so much pain and also joy.
In seeking therapy for a bout of depression, I began to search for answers and then better questions.
Continued in article The Task of Meaning-Making.
[Painting is from Dianne Albin Facebook page.]
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