CREATIVITY IN CRISIS
John Milton wrote Paradise Lost after losing his wife, his daughter and his eyesight. Van Gogh created The Starry Night, along with some of his other most celebrated paintings, from an asylum while battling crippling anxiety, depression and possible bipolar disorder. Virginia Woolf wrote To the Lighthouse as a way to cope with the loss of her mother. Frida Kahlo picked up a paintbrush for the first time after a near-fatal bus accident. Look at biographies of artists and you will find their best work often follows periods of suffering. This suffering seems to force them out of their routines and allows them to do new things that the world has not seen before. Art helps them to understand and process what has happened.