Panic Attacks and Painting Spells

Have you ever noticed the connection between mental illness and creativity?

How the person writing the novel suffers from depression?
How the musician has anxiety disorder?
How the artist is ADHD?

Now I'm no scientist or psychologist so I don't know the studies behind this claim of mine.
 And I don't know if the chicken comes before the egg in this scenario or the egg comes before the chicken.

But I do know that with great talent comes great struggles.

And I am in no way saying that I am any great artist.
 I don't think I am.
I am probably my greatest critic and never feel like any piece is complete because it always can be improved.

But...

I do know my struggles.

And I look around me at those I think are the most talented.
They have struggles too.
They are filled with self-loathing, fear, the jitters or nothing at all...
And they hurt.

When I am in a bad place I always ask myself two questions.

Where am I am spiritually?
AND
When was the last time I created something?

And honestly, by improving one or both of those things I am able to leave that bad place and get to a better one.

Why is that?

Is it because my soul needs to create, that I am here to inspire and connect with others through my art?

Or is it because the demons inside me are only quelled through slapping them onto a canvas and covering them with brushstrokes until all I can see is the paint, instead of the pain?


I don't know.
But I do know that art, whether painting or drawing, brings me to peace.
Often that peace is accompanied by a deep need to sleep because I end up so emotionally exhausted.
But it's peace.

Genetically I come from a long line of artists and poets.
People who found peace in creating.
Maybe the line of mental illness in my family has us all grasping for a means of escape, and we end up in the arts.
Or maybe we are all artists and those abilities come with a price, the price of mental illness.
And maybe there is some third factor that I don't know of, that maybe our artisticness leads us to think deeper, and that deep thinking exposes us to the demons that plague humanity.

Regardless of why this connection exists I will gratefully accept my fair share of suffering if it means that someone sees something I created and they find the peace I found in its completion.

Because at the end of the day I am grateful.
And I will continue painting with faith because I know that is where I am supposed to be.
Standing with a canvas in front of me and a palette knife in my hand.
Enduring my trials.
Painting with faith.