Art and Mental Health: How Creativity Heals

Mental health is no longer something hidden away in private journals or whispered about in the dark. Today, it has become a central theme in creative culture. Visual artists across the world are using paint, photography, and mixed media to express the realities of anxiety, depression, healing, and hope. Their work is not only stunning but also deeply relatable. If you have ever struggled with your own well-being, seeing those emotions reflected in art can feel like a mirror held up to your own experiences.

In this piece, I will look at some incredible artists who explore mental health through their visual practice. Along the way, we will think about how journaling and creative reflection can complement the process of engaging with art that speaks to our inner lives.

Art and Mental Health: Famous Artists Who Turned Pain Into Creativity:

1. Yayoi Kusama

The interactive art installation of With All Love for Tulips

The Japanese artist known for her immersive infinity rooms and polka dots has spoken openly about living with obsessive-compulsive disorder and visual hallucinations. Kusama voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in the 1970s and has lived and worked there ever since. Her installations are celebrated globally not only for their beauty but also for the way they confront repetition, obsession, and the feeling of being overwhelmed. Kusama shows that art can be a form of survival.

“I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art.” 

2. Tracey Emin

Tracey´s Bed - My Bed (1998), Exhibition Tracey Emin, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de MÁLAGA , Malaga, Spain

British artist Tracey Emin is famous for her confessional style. Works such as “My Bed” and her neon texts deal openly with trauma, depression, and recovery. She has consistently broken boundaries around what is acceptable to share in public. By transforming her personal struggles into art, she reminds us that there is strength in vulnerability.

“It’s about looking at myself in my weakest, lowest, physical and mental ebb. I’m looking at myself when I’m too tired to think.”

3. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Creator: SOTHERBY'S / HANDOUT | Credit: EPA

Basquiat’s work in the 1980s brought together graffiti, painting, and poetry. Beneath the vibrant energy of his canvases lay recurring themes of isolation, racism, and identity. Basquiat lived with addiction and depression, which shaped his raw, layered imagery. Today, his art continues to resonate with people navigating mental health challenges.

“Sometimes I make something I don’t even understand until later.”

4. Louise Bourgeois

Eye blenches II von Louise Bourgeois, 1996-1997

“Art is a guarantee of sanity.”

Known for her giant spider sculptures, Bourgeois frequently explored themes of fear, memory, and anxiety. Her drawings and installations are deeply psychological and rooted in her own experiences of trauma. She often described art as a way of exorcising inner pain.

“I know that when I finish a drawing, my anxiety level decreases. When I draw it means that something bothers me, but I don’t know what it is. So it is the treatment of anxiety.”

5. Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893, National Gallery, Oslo

Most people know Munch through his iconic painting “The Scream,” which captures existential terror in a single distorted figure. What many do not know is that Munch experienced severe anxiety and depression throughout his life. His art was a means of translating those feelings into something universally recognisable.

“My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder.”

6. Contemporary Voices

Image by @gemmacorrell

Artists like Yayoi Kusama have paved the way for younger creators. Today, many emerging artists use social media to share illustrations, comics, and photography about mental health. Accounts on Instagram, such as Gemma Correll’s cartoons about anxiety or Polly Nor’s surreal drawings about inner demons, connect with millions.

Journaling as a Personal Form of Art

My Artwork

For me, art has always been an outlet to manage my mental health. Drawing helps me slow down, focus, and gives me a real sense of achievement, especially when someone connects with or appreciates what I’ve created. That feeling of self-gratification reinforces the value of expressing myself, whether through sketches, words, or colour.

In the same way, keeping a journal is its own form of art. Every page becomes a canvas that captures mood, energy, and emotion in raw, unfiltered ways. The handwriting, doodles, and reflections combine into a visual reference of my life and a creative record of my journey. Over time, it becomes a living archive of growth, resilience, and personal expression.

Discovery Journal - Pink

This is why journaling is so powerful for mental health. It doesn’t just help me process feelings; it also provides the same concentration and grounding that drawing does.

Guided tools like the Discovery Journal make this process even more accessible, offering prompts that encourage reflection while allowing creativity to flow. With practice, journaling turns into more than a habit; it becomes a piece of personal artwork that documents who you are and how you’ve navigated your emotions.

Art has always been a mirror of the human condition. When artists lay bare their own struggles with depression, anxiety, and healing, they give the rest of us permission to do the same. Whether through brushstrokes, sculpture, or doodles in your own journal, expressing emotion visually is a way of reminding ourselves that we are never alone.