Building an online library/archive of resources around the complex relationship between art and mental health
Welcome to Create Me Free where I share all of my deep research into and musings about the complex relationship between art and mental health. While I touch on art as therapy and the benefits of creativity, I also look at the times when creativity exacerbates mental health symptoms. Specifically, I really dig into the ways that our mental health symptoms can impact our creative process, content, productivity, medium choice, self-perception, and reception by others.
I believe we are all artists with mental health experiences.
When I use the term “mental health” I sometimes mean things with a diagnosis and symptoms but just as often I mean something akin to “how the challenges of life are affecting our thoughts and experiences.”
And that, in turn, affects our creativity, which might mean the art that we make but creativity also manifests in our relationships, work, and way of engaging with the world.
Why I Do This Work
There has long been widespread agreement among artists, culture makers, psychologists and other professionals that there is a relationship between art and mental health. Despite this, the way that this relationship has been studied is both limited and limiting. Art therapy programs look almost solely at how art can provide catharsis, emphasizing the benefits of art without considering a more nuanced shadow side to the relationship. Art and culture, on the other hand, magnify a perceived negative relationship best exemplified by the tired trope of the “mad genius” or “crazy artist.” Having spent nearly two decades researching this relationship, I find that the truth is much more complex; art can be highly therapeutic for many people but the symptoms of mental health conditions often negatively impact the creative process, medium, content, productivity, identity and business of artists. And yet, most persist in their creativity in spite of this.
If we can dig deeper into understanding this shadow side of the relationship between art and mental health, without hyperbolizing it into some story about “well artists are crazy,” then we can perhaps figure out common problems in the relationship and therefore identify solutions. This has the potential to improve holistic wellness (mental, physical, financial, relational) for artists working across diverse mediums.
My research explores this complex relationship in varied ways: through lived experience as a full-time writer/artist living with double depression (persistent depressive disorder and recurring bouts of major depressive episodes), through interviews with contemporary artists across different genres including a new approach where interview responses can be provided in images or sound art to account for neurodiversity in the responses, and through a review of the history of art and psychology to explore instances where this topic has arisen in the past but not been fully evaluated in this specific way.
What It Means When You Pay to Support This Work
I believe in moving away from a model where artists and writers are paid per item that they produce. It’s a system that has created unsustainable machine-like productivity requirements for creatives who often need time, space, energy to dream and daydream and soak in inspiration and let ideas marinate and revise work. I want to change this.
And I work towards that change in a deep way, through this work and research, through support of programs like basic income for artists and healthcare for creatives. And I hope it changes on a deep systemic level. But it’s also important to consider what we can do right now. Where we put our money reflects our values and priorities. What you’re buying when you commit to an annual subscription to Create Me Free is not a “product” … it’s a contribution to something you value.
A subscription to Create Me Free means that you value and want to directly support:
The idea that working artists can and should earn a living wage. Because art is important to our world.
That mental health matters for all people. That a better holistic understanding of the complex relationship between art, mind, body, creativity, and business is good for all of us.
That art is highly therapeutic which offers us great value but that it’s also nuanced and has a shadow side that is under discussed. You’re supporting the development of this discussion.
That it’s helpful to have a place, right here, where there is a growing body of resources related to that complex relationship between art and mental health.
That it’s beautiful to have a community of creatives who are able to support one another in myriad ways by connecting right here.
That creative process can’t be valued and measured by the number of specific pieces you produce so we have to find a way to pay for artists for process not only product.
That doing so will result in deep and meaningful creative work that betters our world instead of the current model which is based on marketing, advertising, pushing products at people, selling workshops, etc.
GOAL: I am trying to find my “1000 true fans” … the 1000 people who believe so deeply in my work that they commit $100 per year to it in order to support its ongoing production.
ARTISTIC TITHING: I practice artistic tithing, meaning that I give a minimum of 10% of all earned income each year directly back to other artists, writers, makers, performers, creators. It’s usually more than 10% but that’s the minimum no matter what else is going on in my life because I believe deeply in the values above.
I offer a Pay What You Can Sliding Scale
WHO IS KATHRYN VERCILLO?
Kathryn Vercillo is a writer/ artist with a passion for researching the complex relationship between art and mental health. She came to this niche through her own experience of crocheting through life-threatening depression, a story she told in part in her book Crochet Saved My Life. She went on to spend over a decade researching the mental and physical health benefits of crochet and crafting while obtaining her Masters Degree in Psychological Studies.
She has since expanded to an exploration of all creativity and wellness with an emphasis not only on art as therapy but also on the many nuanced ways that mental health symptoms impact creative process, content, medium, productivity, self-perception and reception by others. She doesn’t distinguish between “good” or “bad” impact so much as opens a curious eye towards the various ways that art is shaped or changed by different symptoms for different people.
Kathryn writes full-time about this topic, digging into it through various tools including interviews with contemporary artists, academic research into historic artists, multi-media research into the topic, and essays written from lived experience. She hopes that by sharing what she learns with others, she can help other artists and writers better understand the way that their personal challenges may impact their art. In addition to understanding, she hopes this work offers validation, encouragement for gentleness with yourself and others, a strengths-based and trauma-informed approach to creativity in all industries, and the beginning of a conversation about the many ways that art and mental health are linked.
For nearly two decades, Kathryn has written for a diverse array of online and print publications, including books that she self-published as well as those published with small publishers. In recent years, she has been moving away from a “pay me per article” approach to writing and using a subscription-based model of support from patrons (currently available through Substack) to support her creative process. This is a reflection of her own need to shift from a model of churning out “content” to one that is more thoughtful, slow, intentional, connected, and community-based. It is also a reflection of what she sees other artists needing, especially those with various mental health challenges. She, herself, continues to live with chronic recurring bouts of major depression that impact her own work in varied ways.
Learn more about me:
HOUSEKEEPING:
I offer a Sliding Scale Pay What You Can option here. It starts as low as $10/year because I know that we are all facing our own financial realities.
I offer the ability to opt into and out of different post types. I write A LOT here. We all have different needs and boundaries around what we can take in, what notifications we want, etc. You can even choose to receive just a once-monthly digest.
My Table of Contents is a place where you can explore all of the different things that I write about.
Want to share your own responses to questions about the relationship between art and mental health? You can answer a visual interview here or answer in words here.
Interested in other ways to collaborate? Here are some invitations.
Contact: createmefree on Instagram and kathryn.vercillo over on gmail
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