i had an art blockage for months... was driving me mad. then i found a release..

books... Art and Fear and 365 of Art...

i also want 30,000 yrs of art, because i want to do inverted perspective. meds seem to be helping my art not hindering it, but i requested this when talking to doc.

Von, are you asking whether you have to be hypomanic in order to fully unleash the creativity needed to produce ze masterpiece?

Doesn't this question really apply to most creative endeavours? You have to be able to focus like a laser beam to compose music and writing is usually completed in a whirlwind.

I don't have a firm grasp on the answer to this question. Clearly you've got to put your consciousness through some type of alteration in order to adopt a creative contenance. Some meds deaden things making it difficult to impossible to function in an unrestricted creative process.

That's it?? Pitiful! Yeah, all that book learnin' didn't do me a dang bit of good.

As a bullshit artist um, *cough* Don't identify as an artist but have always created things, drawn, painted, sewed, designed & also write & um, other stuff.

As psych meds
a/can dull you out
b/curb the frequency/intensity of those productive, inspired gusts of hypo brain fizz

yeah, it has an impact. One the one hand that's great as highs tend to go nuclear & disorganised

but it detracts some also, arguably. My mom's paintings before she was put on lithium & antipsychotics are freer, more uninhibited (& beautiful, I think!)...she used to get so gripped with fevers of creativity & I know she misses being able to access that creatively fertile state so easily.

For me, my writing etc when very manic is total word salad, obviously psychotic & incoherent so meds are beneficial in that regard

I admire, like many people, artwork obviously created by disturbed minds, in extreme states (didn't describe that well)

ie/ so-called Outsider artists..often share common obsessiveness, intricate detail & brilliance, really..who are schizophrenic or otherwise mentally ill

(people like Henry Dager with his Vivian Girl series etc etc)

The Cunningham Dax collection (at a University in Melbourne) is works saved by psychiatrists by people suffering mental illness & is really something to behold

There are rooms titled things like 'schizophrenia', 'mania', 'depression', "Suicides', 'OCD' & so on & there are some really remarkable enthralling pieces. I could so go on for hours!

Crapping on!! :)

I mean Cunningham Dax is works created while these individuals were in clinically disturbed state- not when stable.

love new art lou. have never seen any of those. others art is inspiring.

and watching clips of The Rebel helps too.. i know i can never aspire to be that bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbkXRB29kT0

(tanx plukk)

Let me introduce you then to Melbourne Institution "The Museum of Particularly Bad Art"- True, it rocks :) hehe x

i think van goghs iris was horrible along with picasso's boy on a donkey.

horrifying pieces.

art is all in the eye of the beholder, sometimes it moves you deeply, others it just moves you to hurl.

Actually no. My mind is clearer and I am happier making me more likely to do creative things. :-)

I cannot focus well when manic-y, and when depressed really either... When I am just normal I do focus a whole lot better.

that is how i feel too amal... i got my groove back, finally with the help of some meds. love it :)

Ohh I saw something on Art and Mentally ill - it was in Switzerland I believe - a museum, I wish I saved the links - lemme see if I can find them...

yay yay send send

Saw one particularly interesting touring exhibition on mental illness/ art in Europe..think it was sponsored by absolut vodka (lol) ..sensational, though x

Here is something - but I am still looking:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art

think it was the Art Brut Collection, Prague, 2006- that sounds like it x