On Art as an Illness

I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't deeply involved in art of some kind or another. One of my earliest memories is of playing on my dad's guitar, just barely able to press down hard enough to make a D chord.

I have drawn, painted, sculpted, written, composed, photographed, and acted for my whole life. As I've gotten older I seem to cycle through one or two mediums at a time.

When in college, for instance, I wrote constantly and I blew glass but hardly ever played my guitar or trumpet. Right after college I mostly did drawings and a few paintings and played in rock bands but I only wrote lyrics and other than a brief, abortive attempt at picking up my airbrush again I dabbled in no other mediums than music and pen and pencil on paper.

For a long stint, other than playing and recording music, the only drawings I did were for band posters. In the last few years I've taken up photography avidly, I continue to record music (though I rarely perform live), I have done several series of paintings, designed an artcar, sculpted in wood and concrete, and built artsy wind chimes.


It seems as if I am forced to turn from one medium to the next despite my own desires as if something clicks in my mind and I need to sit with an Exacto and masking tape for days, making my spray paint paintings

and then it clicks, mid-project, and I have to start laying down tracks for a new composition. It is as if there is a compulsion to create these things which is beyond my control and which shifts interest seemingly on a whimsy. For weeks I will find myself wanting to write lengthy essays on a wide variety of subjects, and without warning I will suddenly be compelled to spend weeks hunched over my car or spend days wandering around with my camera, looking for a shot.
Sometimes I'll suddenly need to sit and deeply manipulate and create images with Photoshop or sit with my acoustic guitar and sing old songs and on those days when there is no drive to actually create I am left with the seemingly endless process of digitally archiving everything I've done and still carry with me.


The reason I am beginning to see this state as an illness is by looking around at all the people living their normal, comfortable lives for whom the artistic process is an utter mystery that reveals itself to them in no way whatsoever.

For most people there is no drive whatsoever to make anything. They go to work, they watch television, they consume, but there seems to be nothing in their minds that they cannot experience in the world already. When they do experience art it is a kind of magic to them, dark and threatening when art shocks or offends them, bright and wonderous when it brings them joy. Creativity is suspect.


Despite these strong reactions, most people feel no compulsion to try to create that experience for themselves and others just as most people enjoy food but really don't care about getting in their and understanding and manipulating the entire process. They'll marvel at the spinach and chicken salad at Applebee's but they won't bother to try to make a better version of it themselves. If they have salad at home it comes out of the bag and the dressing comes out of a bottle just as their art matches the sofa and comes with the frame or comes on a mass marketed cd or plays on their television.

So people whose experience with art is a force that commands them are the exception to the rule and therefore, by our modern definitions, they are sick.

If one uses the DSM to inspect the psyche of any artist one will find at least one issue that requires "treatment." The people that are not in some way insane are the ones who are content to live their lives inside the hive with no artistic drive whatsoever.

Thank goodness for self medication!