Healthy Creativity: Art, Artists, and Mental Health
Art and mental health are inextricably linked. An artist's mental health can markedly influence what and how they create. The creation of art is often seen as a powerful means of expression, and can have therapeutic effects for those with mental health struggles. There also exist a number of myths surrounding art and mental health, such as that of the "tortured artist." Myths such as this can communicate the idea that an artist should suffer in order to create something meaningful. This may lead artists to seek out suffering and hardship for the sake of creativity, or even stop creating if they feel they have not suffered enough. ​In informing artists and aspiring artists about the connection between art and mental health, I hope to dissuade them from adhering to problematic narratives like the "tortured artist" myth, as well as help them to understand how their creativity affects their own mental health.
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Background: Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, by Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh struggled with depressive symptoms for much of his adult life, and found comfort and joy in artistic creation.
About Me
My name is Alex Krack, and I am a second-year undergraduate student at the University of Richmond, studying psychology and leadership. I intend to work as a therapist when I have finished school. Getting to understand people and why they behave the way they do I find incredibly fascinating, and I want to use this fascination for something good.
Art, meanwhile, may not be my trade or field of study, but I have had a passion for it for most of my life. From visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art (to the right, on the bottom is a picture of me at the Met) with my parents at age three, to creating my own art years later (poetry, music, drawing, painting), art has always been one of my raisons d'être. I find great joy in creating and consuming art, and enjoy the deeply rewarding emotional release.
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