Pain as a Prerequisite

All writers are familiar with the concept of writer's block. Rachel Cunningham, as a painter, was experiencing painter's block. She stared at the blank canvas in the studio next to her house with an equally blank mind.

She thought about the concept of the "tortured artist." Rachel had done a research paper on the concept while pursuing her art degree. Many people claimed that suffering deepens creativity, trauma fuels originality, and madness leads to genius.

Her theory was that people found the concept relatable because in it, they found justification for their own pain and suffering, reasoning, "If their pain resulted in fame or fortune, then there may be purpose for mine."

She further posited that it was a potential danger in that it could glorify mental illness. Her conclusion, while sound, was not always easy in reality. She claimed that people should separate pain from the process, normalize healing and emotional range, and accept that art doesn't need suffering, just truth.

At that time, however, she gave up with the truth of her empty canvas, deciding a fresh mind in the morning might produce some results.

Nighttime ablutions completed, she climbed into bed, haunted by the thought of yet another day of staring at a blank canvas.

Her dream started out pleasant enough. She was inside Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night, walking the field and enjoying the swirling stars. She could hear music by Ludwig van Beethoven, the darkest section of his Pathétique Sonata. It started bending out of tune and slowing down painfully.

At the same time, the colors around her started to shift and melt. The image around her changed to one of Van Gogh, just as he was about to cut his ear off. When he sliced it, the pain on Rachel's own head was instantaneous. She reached up and felt blood where her ear should have been.

She had no control. She felt not just physical pain, but also the agony of a troubled mind. The very instance she thought about suicide, she had a gun in her own hand, pointed to her own head. "No!" she yelled, just as she pulled the trigger. The pain was sharp but blessedly short-lived.

She opened her eyes, only to see a sinister-looking Robin Williams staring her down. She felt his mental anguish and found she was choking, with a belt around her neck, his chosen method of departure. Her thought just before passing out was, "How many times am I to die tonight?"

The scene became disjointed and settled on Francisco Goya's Satan Devouring His Son. Rachel's mind was dark and mad. She was deaf to Beethoven’s sonata, just as the composer had become himself.

She felt Satan eating away at her limbs. Her body convulsed. She became paralyzed on her right side. Rachel screamed loudly, though she couldn't hear it.

Then, the world around her jumbled again and she could then hear her scream, just as The Scream by Edvard Munch appeared around her.

The fear and darkness were palpable. The changes were coming more rapidly now. She saw whimsical cats from Lous Wain, which became more chaotic as schizophrenia took hold.

The image shuffled again, replaced by Caravaggio's Medusa.

Rachel looked away quickly, not wanting to becoming stone, but Caravaggio's anger permeated her. She wanted to punch Beethoven for writing the dark music becoming an unwanted, warped earwig. "I don't want to be in the mind of any more tortured men," she yelled. So, the image changed instead to that of a woman, Frida Kahlo's, The Broken Column.

She felt physical agony from a horrific bus accident and nails being dug into her skin. Suddenly, her right leg was amputated from the knee down. She struggled to keep her balance and lost the battle, falling through space and time.

As she landed, she woke up, disoriented. She was not in her bed. She was on the floor in her studio. She looked up, expecting to see her disappointing blank canvas. Instead, she saw her truth in art.

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Author's note: The images above have been edited by me through Microsoft Photos and/or AI. The words of the story are mine.

I hope you enjoyed this tale and art history lesson as much as I enjoyed researching it.

Sources:

https://www.teravarna.com/post/art-born-of-suffering-the-tortured-artists-in-history

https://www.artst.org/famous-dark-paintings/

Wikipedia

Microsoft