Art Expresses Emotion and Turmoil

Classical artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, John William Waterhouse and William Blake painted landscapes, figures and portraits that were so close to reality that they look much like photographs. Indeed, their work was frequently emotionally neutral. However, not all art seeks to replicate reality as a photograph. Here I would like to start with the life and painting of Edvard Munch before moving into my much more modest efforts. Most readers know of his work “The Scream.” He was born in 1863 in what is now Oslo, Norway, to a military doctor. His childhood experiences with death and sickness, both his mother and sister died of tuberculosis, greatly influenced his emotional and intellectual development. This and his father's fanatic Christianity led Munch to view his life as dominated by the "twin black angels of insanity and disease." I have confirmed the negative impact that extreme Christian Fundamentalism can have on an adolescent’s development. Edvard Munch said, "When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights." What he is saying is that the normal brain cannot understand the internal struggles of the artist.

“The Scream,” painted in 1893, depicts Edvard’s internal suffering and anxieties. Munch reports his feelings that drove creation of this work. "I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, dead tired. And I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."

Art in my life at age 22; Brent A. Vogt (see his book “The ADHD and Abuse Damaged Brain). I was long aware of the roll of emotion in pain processing in the brain even before entering graduate school. Long before the neuroscientific community recognized this amazingly obvious fact, I was aware that the key to understanding pain was its triggering of emotional responses in the limbic system. These facts appeared to me in my Transitional Period (late adolescence) as I turned inward and expressed them in a number of ways artistically.

To conceptualize my life to age 21, I commissioned a bronze sculpture of my life that would depict its evolution from bottom to top. A young lady of about my age with the last name Rubin, I do not remember her first name, listened to me describe what I wanted in the composition and followed it exactly as I described it to her. The picture below shows the front (left) and back (right) and labelling beginning at the bottom where stormy seas reflect the underlying turmoil encountered by me and my sister in the Vogt family. My pregnant mother is shown followed by my being held in the grips of an angry tiger with its left upper incisor tooth exposed as tigers do when threatened (right picture). This is a reflection of the cold religious upbringing I had and also reflects the fear of being engulfed by my parents and their religion as the ribs of the tiger are the fingers of a human hand holding me with crushing force. Surprisingly, two final touches at the top suggest hope. On the right there are wings suggesting that flight from my demonic parents and their strict religious beliefs could be achieved. Moreover, on the left my head is shown as an unformed block rather than as it was at the time. This is because I did not know where I would be going in life once freed from this violent family. I now know.

When the sculpture was finished, Miss Rubin’s mother visited to see her work. The two of them conversed quietly in a corner of the room so I could not hear their dialogue. They both were hugging and crying. It has always been my thought that Miss Ruben had been abused at some point in her adolescence and that is why she was so adept at interpreting my wishes for the work and why they were upset when sharing the experience of my/her sculpture. I hope that it speaks to other abuse survivors who can add their own interpretations.

In Philadelphia, while attending the Philadelphia College of Bible, I spent much time in the Rodan museum with his sculpture of the “Gates to Hell.” This was likely Stanley’s view of Hell that he was “saving” me from by “not sparing the rod.” He really took the scriptures as truth to beat the hell out of me. The sculpture is shown with an excellent photograph by Roman Suzuki via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0). While this sculpture was never finished, the Thinker is embedded in its top, possibly reflecting the human consideration of life choices and outcomes. Below and around its edges are Rodan’s view of Hell and the torture of its members in eternal damnation. This reflects the view of my parents and the outcome Stanley was trying to “help” me avoid with harsh physical abuse; it being for my own good of course!

Between the ages of 21 and 22 I was in a particularly depressed state as indicated by my self-portrait at this time and other works. I went back to the Church of the Open Bible in Burlington, MA that I attended while living in Andover, played my coronet before services and had choir practice. As I walked through the main sanctuary and basement where church functions and Sunday school were held, I felt an overwhelming fear of this environment and never returned to it again. I also avoided all interactions with the people I knew when growing up. Avoidance of fearful triggers is one symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder and this symptom and others continue in me to this day.

The face is an important reflection of the current emotional state of an individual and statements can be made with self-portraits that are not possible in any other way including written text. In my early 20s I was going through a transition from my life as a Fundamentalist Christian with a regimented perspective on values, life goals and success by depending on “the blood of Jesus Christ” to a secular life where I determined who I was rather than living as a vessel to be reflected by Jesus Christ. As I said at that time, “I am creating a new person who can become whatever internal and external realities dictate.” Of course, the strict moral code and work ethic learned in my youth were not lost, but I was now in the driver’s seat and not beholden to a religious leader through which the values of Jesus Christ and Biblical teachings were 2 millennia old.

Such a transition at ages 20-24, is catastrophic, especially to an adolescent without adequate support systems, and my artistic work reflected that. Many adolescents with family and other abuse-relevant issues such as contemplating suicide, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and PTSD turn to drugs for self-medication, I turned to art and neuroscience.

This self-portrait shows a seriously angry and depressed youth with a drawn face in the context of turmoil and the statement “Dead Birds Fly.” This statement reflects the fact that what you see is not reality. A bird flying usually signifies life and cheerfulness, but in my world view it was simply a delusion. I produced another piece in which the world is depicted in full pastel colors on the left but behind it on the right was a completely black and disheartening world with lightening indicating a storm. Again, what you see in everyday life is not reality. Picasso said, “you must paint what you know is there, not what you see.”

In another piece called “Hands” there are a number of things that stand out. One is selfmutilation with the knife and blood splashing and streaming from my arm. I never cut myself as adolescent girls with Borderline Personality Disorder often do to self-injure themselves, but this picture clearly shows an impulse to such a behavior. I was also suicidal at this time. The bars emphasize the jail of previous religious constraints and one of my hands grabbing a bar in an effort to exit this torment. A third hand reaches up and also reflects my desire to escape a life of mental torment and suffering. The fact that it is there at all may indicate a sense of hope; knowing that there were other possibilities.

These views appear occasionally in my dreams decades later. Our brains are quite active during sleep as they consolidate memories possibly to better use brain real estate. In one dream, for example, I was climbing a large staircase with some close colleagues and an early mentor. As we ascended there was general conversation and at the top of the stairs we opened a door to view the world. It was virtually flooded with water; the winds were howling in a tempest, there were a few trees above the water and occasional houses floated by in the water. This is not what one would expect when leaving a building except during a hurricane.

While on the subject of dreams, I must recount another rather provocative dream as they can recreate scenarios with stored emotional and cognitive information in the brain that reflect attitudes toward the present or past. In this particular dream I dragged Blanche down into the cellar where I spent most of my time. There I sat on the cold cement floor, turned her over in my lap and pulled her dress up to expose her buttocks. With my bare hand I beat her until she bled. I am certain that Freud would have greatly enjoyed hearing of this dream and trying to understand my life through this lens. It expressed my obvious hatred for Blanche.

As an example of emotional abuse we consider the struggles of Beth Hart who is a pianist, vocalist and composer. Her piece “War in My Mind” reflects an internal struggle expressed through her art and her lyric video emphasizes the brain. Of this piece she said, “… on this album, I’m even closer to vulnerability and openness about my life, about love, addiction, my bipolar, my dad, my sister…” During an interview with Don Wilcock (2016) for Blues Blast she said, “Her childhood was scarred by a rocky relationship with her father. When I was a kid, my dad left me in a bad way, and what f***ed me up the most was that he would be in the lives of my other sisters and brothers, but he wouldn’t be in mine.” One may conclude that emotional abuse can be as destructive psychologically and in terms of brain damage as other forms of abuse (i.e., physical and neglectful).

Finally, the movie “Rocketman” about the life of Elton John is a remarkable portrayal of his anger at how he was rejected by his parents and others. The large red wings and devilish horned headdress certainly refer to his anger. Toward the end of the movie he hugs the child actor who stood in his place. At this moment he accepted himself as he was and the demonic attire disappeared for the remainder of the movie. Fear, anger, anxiety and other destructive emotions collect in the heads of abused children/adolescents and can cause irreversible damage therein. Many survivors of emotional, physical and neglectful abuse employ various art forms to express their internal strife, fears, and anxieties. Alan Cumming, actor, Broadway star, composer, was physically abused by his adult supervisor (Not His Father’s Son) asked an excellent question, “what would I be doing if not for this career that provides me with the adrenaline surge I need in my life?” I suggest that he might have engaged in aggression and violence as part of the Cycle of Violence. The conjunction of artistic expression as psychotherapy; be it professional or simply for personal benefit, is an important avenue to dealing with the survivor’s internal struggles.