On painting in an effort to combat the sadness

I see the sadness in your eyes. I hear it in your voice. You look strained when you sit across from me on the subway, scanning the latest, horrible news on your phone. People don’t go out much, which make them lonely and sad. You are not alone - everybody I know is so sad right now. I’m sad, too. Because so many things are depressing and worth feeling sad about.

We’re all getting calls from friends sharing terrible news. The kids are anxious. The waters are rising. And I’m not smart enough to write anything about the violence we are witnessing around the world.

La Douleur (Sorrow), Paul Cezanne

Maybe your sadness is very personal. You are fighting with your business partner or your friend and, of course, your spouse. Your dog might have tumors on her spleen or she might not. The news might have been medium bad at your last doctor’s appointment or maybe, while they claim that you are officially past the breast cancer, you swear that you can feel the malefic cells moving along your bones and puddling in your lymph nodes. You might be flat broke or you might be looking for work, the saddest occupation of all.

There is always the possibility of heartbreak-driven sadness. That kind takes a real physical toll.

Frida Kahlo, Memory, the Heart

You might have driven yourself into sadness by repeatedly name calling yourself the most terrible thing: a failure.

You might also be sad just because you are a living, breathing human being who is capable of sadness.

“Life will break you,” wrote Louise Erdrich, which leads us to the possibility that you are sad just because you are (temporarily) broken.

And if you are living through the worst possible sadness - the human loss kind, I’m not going to tell you that anything will light your path forward, much less a bunch of polymers carrying pigment across a piece of taut canvas. It won’t.

The Sick Child, Munch

Lee Krasner, Charred Landscape

Whatever is making you feel sad, I’m very sorry about your sadness.

And when I am in the grips of sadness the very last thing I want to do is to make art. If I am being honest the only thing I want to do when I’m sad is watch reality TV because reality TV offers the exact kind of emptiness that sadness wants as its awful companion. (I mean sometimes it is so sad that it’s funny, right?)

Goya, The Dog

But despite how much I don’t want to paint when I’m sad, I know that when I am feeling sad the only thing that might get me out of the fierce grip of sadness is to get out my paints (for you maybe it is pencils, a loom, gardening sheers, crocheting needles, a guitar, a surfboard, baking sheets, quilting squares, a mixologist set, a piano, ballet shoes, a yellow notepad…. but don’t even think about adding running shoes to my list! Make your own damn list if you want to talk running shoes.)

We know that art can be therapeutic. Maybe the endorphin and serotonins and and whatever other ‘ins’ that released when making art actually do, as the doctors now claim, improve mental health. FIX YOUR MENTAL HEALTH! every screams to everybody all the time nowadays. As if.

And you don’t have to be an artist to benefit from art’s wellness super powers, although, just to be clear - you are an artist (“Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating - whether it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day.” - Sister Corita Kent”)

look, Sister Corita Kent

Picasso, Woman with Bangs (could she be sad about the bangs?)

Why is it so healing to make a painting? Or is it actually healing? (Something genius I saw on Reddit recently: “Drawing makes me depressed but so does not drawing”)

Maybe it is the physical action of moving your body while being mindful of how your body is moving.

Maybe the act of staring at color and fruit and shapes and only thinking of color, fruit and shapes is the secret.

Maybe it is releasing the pain of it all.

And for those of you who skew towards the sad end of the happiness spectrum, maybe it feels good to make use of the difficult emotions that gather in you. Munch said “My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others.” If you are going to feel a bit more sad than most people, than you might as well get something out of it. And it is a gift to the world to go outward with your sadness because it makes other people feel less alone in their sadness. ( “Tonight I can write the saddest lines.….” brags Neruda in the opening of his “Saddest Poem”)

Salman Toor, Crying Boy with Candle

This is all to say, I’m so sorry that you are feeling sad. And it might help a bit to make some art, but I can’t promise that it will. xo Sara