Representations of Anxiety and Depression

Art by Meg Benton

Fear In America

““Fear In America” is about the anxiety I feel when I watch the news and in general the fear that I felt growing up in America. These anxieties first came into my awareness during September 11th. I was in middle school and I remember the impact of the cycling news reels. What really has struck me as an adult is the culture of terror that is perpetuated by the media. I struggle with anxiety. Exploring the root of some of my anxieties through art helps me to come to terms with my view of the world and it also has the potential to open up conversations about these topics with friends, family and peers. ”

— M. Benton

Check out more of Megan's art below.

A Look At Agoraphobia

Anxiety

Depression

Overwhelmed

I make art because it helps me give balance to a world I often view as chaotic.  I present visual expression to come to terms with my experience of being overwhelmed by things like; war, poverty, famine, global warming, societal problems, and the radius of fear that Americans experience and the American media propels. I am inspired to make art because I feel that I am creating visual solutions to the universal problems I see.  My art signifies awareness of the world and its connection to my personal journey.  It is a way of spreading information on an intuitive level.  Often times I use portraits to express the presence of worldly problems.  I use human expression and my own journey to convey how people either accept or do not accept these problems.  My ceramic pieces are also an expression of problem solving.  However, unlike my other work, I express solutions in an abstract sense.  Working with clay is a holistic experience for me.  Making art is important to me because it allows me to come to terms with things that would otherwise overwhelm me.  I endeavor to make a positive change with my artwork.

Megan's Website. 

Reverse Abstraction: Giving Form and Contour to Mental States

Art and a narrative by Michael Johnson

I remember when I was much younger I loved reading about mythical creatures. I was addicted to reading cryptozoological books, and I filled my sketchbooks cover to cover with depictions of those strange creatures. Yet for all the outlandish and fantastic beasts I read about, my favorite always was the lowly jackalope. Wyverns, sphynxes, the Loch Ness Monster; those were all well and good but I knew that they were just stories and myths, and I knew I would never have a chance of ever actually seeing one in real life. The jackalope, on the other hand had some promise. It seemed just real enough to maybe exist, and the idea of one day stumbling upon one filled me with the same giddy boyish hope one gets when planning out their future career as a firefighting astronaut who also plays professional football on the side. Eventually, as I got older, I of course went through the phase where one has to come to terms with the fact that most of their boyhood dreams would unfortunately remain as such. I learned that fires do not typically occur in space, I learned that astronaut training is prohibitively rigorous and does not leave much time for football practice in the off season. I learned that I wasn't really good at football anyway. And while this childhood disillusionment is perfectly natural, mine seemed to continue unendingly to new lows. I learned that people lie more often than they tell the truth, I learned that pain was a much more common force than pleasure. I learned that my parents hated each other, and that love could have just as well been a creature in one of my books. I learned that the most I could hope for in life was a vague discontentment, although more often then not my life felt like a painful and pointless burden I had to carry around with me forever and ever until I finally got to die. Then one day I learned something which had an unexpected effect on how I viewed everything. I learned that jackalopes were in fact real animals. The one fairy tale creature that I always had a hunch might actually be real turned out to be so. I was right after all. Yes, there are instances where rabbits grow horns or antler-like protrusions from their skulls, and it is because they are afflicted with cottontail papilloma virus, a type of cancer which causes uncontrollable keratinous growths. These growths eventually get so large that they interfere with the rabbits ability to eat, and the rabbit eventually dies a slow, pathetic, malformed death.

All of those saccharine promises that were made to me about life turned out to be thinly veiled cancers. Every conceivable thing about this world that I thought was positive ended up being a disease that results in an agonizing death. Life itself, from the second you come out of the womb, is just a long, drawn out process of dying. And as I grew older and older my life really did feel like a cancerous growth on my skull that was ever increasing in size, and I knew that one day the weight of it would crush my cranium and kill me. Around this time I also discovered I appreciated movies with sad endings. It was in middle school when I first made these connections, and these dismal beliefs have had an unfortunate permanence ever since.

If you can think of your life as a lens of perception, then depression is a film of soot on that lens that distorts and misshapes everything you come into contact with. Everything you see, hear, feel, or think is rendered ugly and pitiful. I have had to look out through these tarnished lenses for quite some time, and one of the few reprieves I have is through painting. The world may be unlovely and inhospitable, but when I'm in front of my canvas then at least for a little while, at least in a small amount of space, I can create something beautiful. It is in this way that I have played the world at it's own game. My subject matter is ugly, just like the rest this existence. My figures are disproportionate; they have odd protrusions erupting from their bodies. My animals are emaciated and sickly. Nearly everything I paint has empty, blind eyes. And just the same I give them saturated, vibrant colors, and I try and make them glow with a chromatic radiance that is in every sense not of this world. I do this because I really want the ugly things to be beautiful too.

​Through painting I have, in my mind, closed the gap between the ugly and the beautiful, or between the happy and the sad. I've come to see that they are just two ends of a continuum that eventually wraps around itself and meets again, and the troughs of your deepest lows are a direct reflection of the crests of the soaring highs that are soon to follow. No rain, no rainbows is what I'm saying, essentially. I can see now that life is like one giant sad ending. A sad ending that has been written so elegantly that you are moved to tears at the sheer beauty. And I really like movies with sad endings

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Check out more of Michael's work below and visit his site here.

Michael Johnson's artwork finds its home somewhere between the unnerving and the alluring, the decaying and the blossoming, the mythic and the biographical. His works can be seen as self-portraits, collectively making up the mindscapes of his consciousness. The process he uses is that of reverse abstraction: he seeks to flesh out those myriad mental states that accompany the human condition and give them form and contour. Anxieties are given hooves and snouts, sleepless nights are turned into sprawling landscapes, tendons and sinew are surgically connected to thoughts and memories until finally an aesthetic figure is born. In this way Michael is like Courbet, constantly pursuing that “Real Allegory” which can be used to outline his psyche. But to say that he is directly inspired by any artist would be a slight misstep. To Michael everything in life is his muse, whether it come in the form of his 10 month old son's scribbles or Mondrian's 10th composition. He subscribes to no set style nor movement, only holding onto his inspirations long enough for them to pass through his lens of perception before being projected onto his canvases and released.

A Photo Narrative of Anxiety

My Anxious Heart by Katie Crawford

My Anxious Heart explores and identifies how emotionally and physically depleting general anxiety disorder can be from a personal perspective. As I have carried anxiety for the majority of my life, I’ve chosen to photographically depict this battle and its constant presence. Since it is within my own mind where anxiety is born, I have decided to interpret my roles as both instigator and victim through self portraiture. 

a captive of my own mind. the instigator of my own thoughts. the more i think, the worse it gets. the less i think, the worse it gets. breathe. just breathe. drift. it’ll ease soon.

Through this body of work, I am visually interpreting my own emotional and physical journey so that others may be able to understand this weight that so many bear in our society. The physical ramifications of the disorder, such as a racing heart, dizziness, shortness of breath and lightheadedness, frequently go unnoticed or are misinterpreted by those who have never suffered from anxiety. Although the physical symptoms make up a great deal of the disorder, the emotional outcome is exceedingly difficult to encapsulate as well. Anxiety bars the sufferer from the risk of discovery, the desire to explore new ideas, and the possibility of exiting a comfort zone. It makes sure that it will never be alone. It finds you when you’re in the midst of joy, or alone in your own mind. It is quiet and steady, reminding you of your past failures, and fabricating your future outcomes. 

My interpretation of these symptoms through my images aids in the explanation of how true anxiety has the capability to drain every last drop of aspiration. This representation is achieved in the photograph with the use of black objects and materials that subtly interact within the frame. Manipulating the images in this way evokes a sense of overprotection and lingering presence. By providing these surreal images as expressions of anxiety within a realistic portrait, the viewer is guided through the internal and external struggle of a person living with this disorder. Using my own stories and experiences, I am capturing the raw essence of anxiety. Through this personal journey, I have grown and found that depicting my fears has become therapeutic, as well as a gateway for others to express their oppression and begin their own healing process.

a glass of water isn’t heavy. it’s almost mindless when you have to pick one up. but what if you couldn’t empty it or set it down? what if you had to support its weight for days… months… years? the weight doesn’t change, but the burden does. at a certain point, you can’t remember how light it used to seem. sometimes it takes everything in you to pretend it isn’t there. and sometimes, you just have to let it fall.

it’s strange — in the pit of your stomach. it’s like when you’re swimming and you want to put your feet down but the water is deeper than you thought. you can’t touch the bottom and your heart skips a beat.

they keep telling me to breathe. i can feel my chest moving up and down. up and down. up and down. but why does it feel like i’m suffocating? i hold my hand under my nose, making sure there is air. i still can’t breathe.

depression is when you can’t feel at all. anxiety is when you feel too much. having both is a constant war within your own mind. having both means never winning.

i’m afraid to live and i’m afraid to die. what a way to exist.

cuts so deep it’s like they’re never going to heal. pain so real, it’s almost unbearable. i’ve become this… this cut, this wound. all i know is this same pain; sharp breath, empty eyes, shaky hands. if it’s so painful, why let it continue? unless… maybe it’s all that you know.

you were created for me and by me. you were created for my seclusion. you were created by venomous defense. you are made of fear and lies. fear of unrequited promises and losing trust so seldom given. you’ve been forming my entire life. stronger and stronger.

my head is filling with helium. focus is fading. such a small decision to make. such an easy question to answer. my mind isn’t letting me. it’s like a thousands circuits are all crossing at once.

numb feeling. how oxymoronic. how fitting. can you actually feel numb? or is it the inability to feel? am i so used to being numb that i’ve equated it to an actual feeling?

i was scared of sleeping. i felt the most raw panic in complete darkness. actually, complete darkness wasn’t scary. it was that little bit of light that would cast a shadow — a terrifying shadow.

Katie Crawford received her BFA from Louisiana State University.  Specializing in surreal portraiture, he focusses on depicting her battle with anxiety and depression through the photographic medium.  Find out more about her work on Facebook, Blog, or on her Website.