ART AND GRIEF

In life, pain and loss is inevitable…it simply comes with the human experience. Our suffering, as we negotiate the emotional labour that naturally arrives through this pain, is something that bonds us all. We all know, to different degrees, how this feels.

I recently lost my father to cancer. It was a long two and half year illness that brought much change to my family and offered us all an opportunity to meet our loss and grief in our own way. 

Grief is a unique process for everyone, as we all experience it differently and find our way with it, as it finds its way with us. It can be a time of deep loss and suffering, a life-changing event that alters our lives and our relationship to ourselves.

Grief is felt when we experience any significant change that disrupts our lives. It can come as a result of losing someone we love, or moving to a new home. It’s a natural, but often a confusing emotion for us to embrace.

As artists we experience most everything through the filter of our creative process - how our art-making is being altered and impacted by our experience. As life changes, we change, and our art and practice changes in response. These experiences of loss and grief will intertwine with our creative process as a result. 

Earlier this year, perhaps in preparation for what I knew was coming, I interviewed an artist, and dear friend, Caroline James, on this topic for my membership community. Caroline had lost her partner to cancer a few years prior and was able to share from her experience, allowing us to understand how it impacted her art-making, and what helped her to reconnect to it once more.

She spoke about the poignant beauty of loss, along with the arrival of unexpected emotions and creative paralysis. How it feels to lose the self, and what it means to meet yourself there – untethered to what once was. Caroline also offered us insights on how to begin again after such a huge shift in one’s experience and life, and what teachings are accessed through this profound vulnerability.

It was a true privilege to witness Caroline’s sincere sharing of her deep personal loss and grief, from an artist’s perspective. And now, at this time of my own grieving, revisiting what she shared is bringing me such comfort. I want to offer her wisdom to you as well…as mine is still forming within me as I process all that I am feeling and how my art-making is being impacted.

Here are the key takeaways from my discussion with Caroline:

Experiencing a significant loss or life change can, and likely will, cause you to feel unable to access your creativity for a period of time. When you experience an absence of access to your creativity it can be very unsettling and generate a lot of anxiety around engaging with your work. While this is normal, it’s important to give yourself access to your studio. Make yourself go to your studio everyday, even if you don’t feel like it. Just being there is enough.

When we have been changed significantly by life events, such as grief and loss, what matters to us changes as well – what we give meaning to changes. We are then called to redefine meaning and purpose for ourselves, and in our art-making. Let go of the things in your art practice that no longer serve you, to make room for something new that is arriving. That process will add new meaning to your work…and it will take time. 

Find a message or statement that anchors you and reminds you of what helps, and look at it often. “Go back to your work. The world needs you.” Caroline heard this message come through for her and wrote this on her studio wall as a visual reminder to pay attention to her needs as a part of her healing journey. It was also a reminder that her work is serving a meaningful purpose – both for her healing and the world’s. 

Accept the humility of the process you are in – grief is especially humbling. Extend patience, trust, and the deepest self-compassion and empathy to yourself, as you work through accepting that you are not the same person you were before. Allow yourself to sit with the discomfort of not knowing who you are becoming. Trust, as much as possible, that who you are becoming is someone you will love.

Know that your first attempt back to work will be, and feel, transitional. Don’t expect to pick-up where you left off. Consider creating “throw away art” that will help you process your feelings, your anger and grief. This work will be unintentionally raw and will help you tell your story and release what is active within you. Most importantly, it will give you an accessible place to start again.

This transitional art will help you realize that you can support your own creative process at this time. As you reflect on it, you can ask yourself, what am I excited about in this work? Focus lightly on that, without expectation or moving to try to define what has emerged as good or bad…just noticing, attending and accepting.

Allow your transitional work to be a place of necessity, which will be a different space of necessity than you experienced before. Recognize it will be a space for you to express your present needs. Do I need to cry, scream, smash charcoal and slam down paint lids? Ask yourself, what is meaningful about this work I am doing and what do I want to do next?

Let go of the expectations and outcomes of your transitional work. Let it be in service of this transitional time…and only ask, what do I feel and need from this work? Then surrender to what wants to come through you and do not judge it. Meet it with openness and acceptance. 

Find a way to remind yourself daily to treat yourself with kindness and compassion. This will help preserve your self identity and self worth. While this is always essential for the support and nurturance of your creative process and development as an artist, it is never more important than it is at this time.

Stay connected to your artist’s community and to people who understand what loss means and can kindly support you with empathy. They will remind you of the importance of your art and how it will heal you. This is essential. 

Know that you will come back from grief to something meaningful. You may not know when or the way that will happen, but it will happen. Trusting this place is necessary. 

Recognize that other losses (such as losing a home or a job) are also significant and will likely affect you in much the same way. This time will also need a transitional art practice to help you emotionally move forward. Connecting with and channeling your emotions will be your authentic work. What you recognize in this work is you and your truth. Don’t give energy to others' experience with it – they will always have their own unique experience with your work. You can trust that.   

Be okay with starting over and returning to the basics – allow yourself to be at the beginning of your art journey once more. Forgive yourself for not being the person or artist you were before your grief or loss. This ability to start at the beginning once more, exercises the creative muscle memory and lays out a way forward that is doable from where you are now – in this new place with yourself and your work. 

Learn to self-soothe and remind yourself that you will be okay. Self-compassion and permission to be where you are is a healing balm for your tender heart.  

When you begin working again, pay attention to what your emotional needs are so they can show up in your work authentically. For example, you may need to create work that is quiet and simplified now, and that may be different from your previous work. Pay attention to where you’re being called to go. At times, you may find yourself moving back into what is familiar from your previous work, simply because it is part of your visual vocabulary. When we’re in new territory we feel the discomfort of not knowing, and this returning to what is familiar provides relief. This moving back and forth is all part of finding who you are now, and revealing that to yourself. If the familiar vocabulary/elements come back into the work, check in with yourself to see if that feels right and authentic for you now. If not, let it go.

Stay curious and take risks when you’re moving beyond the work you once did. Your new work will transition with you as you move through the grieving/change process. Your new work will be in service of your healing, as it builds new pathways of meaning for you.

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