Art Bruises: when creativity hurts

The hidden pain behind creative work. How artists carry physical pain, discomfort, and injury as part of their craft

👋 Dear creative. How are you doing today?

Let’s be real: those bruises seem to be a default of the craftsmanship

It’s been a while, and as I write this, I realize how much I enjoy sending you these letters, not only for you but also for myself. The vision behind this newsletter is to bring value to your journey, to serve as a tool for growth and deeper awareness of what it truly means to create. From the behind-the-scenes perspective, the character of the creative, the training, and the making and building of things. We are crafters, and that word means a lot to me; it’s about putting soul into what we create, especially in an era that can strip that soul from our work.

I had to pause my work due to the constant discomfort artists experience when pushing the limits of their bodies. I took a few days off, but still, I create mindfully, with a more focused approach to spare quality time for healing. So, today, I am sharing a reflection on the ART of Bruises or the Bruises of Art. It’s an interesting play on meanings, right? Enjoy!

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☕ Grab some tea or coffee, and let’s go!

1. Art bruises reflections

2. Oh! Artists - how to create in pain: lessons from artists

3. Curious - creative awe & tools

4. My new creative bundle

✦ Did you miss the last post? We looked into checking boxes.

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Art bruises: insights on the Artist, AI, and the cost of creating

Artists, creatives, and people in other professions who require repetitive gestures and movements all carry the weight of their craft in their bodies. Whether it’s playing instruments, drawing, designing, or health work and more, these practices come with physical demands — steady, constant, and often invisible to others. Even in digital arts, despite technology, our postures, our hands, and our backs feel the impact of this repetition. These are the "bruises" of our art, and while we often just cope and push through, it's crucial to recognise when to pause, to rest, and to listen to our bodies before small bruises turn into lasting damage.

What’s powerful, though, is that these bruises can also be transformed into fuel for creativity. They become part of our story, our projects, and our conversations. Artists like Frida Kahlo or Vincent Van Gogh turned their pain, both physical and mental, into masterpieces that resonate deeply. These challenges become lessons, showing us the importance of adapting, of evolving our tools and methods to preserve our ability to create. It’s about being mindful of the cost of creation, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually, so we can continue crafting with resilience and intention.

It’s true that we’re experiencing an identity crisis as creatives. This isn’t an easy phase, and it can take a toll on our mental health and motivation. Yet, the lessons we learn from our bruises run deeper than we often realize. Our craftsmanship holds a deeper meaning, and those bruises resonate within it. As always, it's a journey of balance.

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🎈Mindful takeaways:

• ❇️ Aha seasons of a creative life
  I had to slow down with drawing, designing, and writing. This pause, once again, in my career serves as another aha moment—a reminder of new ways to create and how these bruises have become signals, guiding me toward a better craft. How do you keep creating when your body demands a pause? How do you find common ground and still aim your arrows toward your goals and vision?

• ❇️ Making art with pain in your body
  As creatives, some of us have experienced the challenge of creating while in physical pain or discomfort. It’s never a pleasure ride — it takes effort, adaptability, and a willingness to let go in order to create within these constraints. Some musicians, for example, have had to give up their craft due to injuries — a bruise that opens up an awareness of the price of creating.

• ❇️ No art comes for free. No AI can understand the BTS of a piece
  The hours, the pain, and the dedication are all embedded in every creation. We see countless artists who have trained tirelessly to develop their unique style, only to have it copied and diluted. This style is forged from sweat, tears, and joy. Especially today, with the rise of AI, there’s this tension between speed, ease, and the depth of human craftsmanship. We must honour the journey and the unseen cost of making art, because that is what keeps it alive, real, and truly human. By reclaiming the art of creation and the bruises that fuel it. AI might replicate styles, but it can never replicate the hidden story, the behind-the-scenes struggle, or the bruises that give life and meaning to a piece.
  *behind-the-scenes

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🖼️ The cover and the craft: For this cover, I found an old frame and used AI to remove the background. Then, I took a picture of a bandage, removed its background as well, and created this composition. This frame represents years of craftsmanship, yet in just a few minutes, I was able to incorporate it into my design to serve the theme of this topic. Interestingly, the copyright of the frame’s craftsmanship has become diluted over time and is now part of a larger whole. An interesting example of a future to scan closely. We’ll talk more about this in the AI issue.

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🎨 Vaillant craftsmanship

1. Frida Kahlo: Vaillant craftsmanship

Frida embodies a resilient artist and a devotion to healing through her craft. Interestingly, before becoming an artist, she ventured into a career in medicine. She suffered from polio as a child, and on September 17, 1925, at the age of eighteen, she and a friend boarded a bus in Mexico City to return home from class. The bus made a turn and accidentally collided with an electric trolley car. Frida survived but was marked by extensive injuries. The pain of her condition did not stop her from speaking her world. She crafted an artistic DNA renowned around the world, deeply rooted in chronic pain and unimaginable discomfort. She was a prolific artist, using her image to share both her physical condition and mental state with audacious transparency. She created over 200 works of art, including paintings, sketches, and drawings. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits that seized deep levels of pain and light of hope rising from it.

‘‘I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone,
because I am the person I know best.’’
Frida Kahlo

Frida thought of medicine as her future career, while painting had always been a hobby. But painting became her healing tool and a gift for us to admire and learn from for generations and genrations.

Frida is an icon today, though some people are not even aware of the pain she poured into her pieces and what they truly meant. She has been elevated as a female leadership icon, and a true advocate for art as a healing tool.

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2. Vincent Van Gogh: turmoil in color

Here, we have a painter who struggled with mental illness and psychiatric episodes but found a sense of salvation in his art practice. His art provided relief as his focus shifted to rhythm and expression. Vincent’s case is complex because his struggles were not always physically visible, yet he famously cut off part of his ear, a physical manifestation of his mental state. What interested me in his way of leading with art is how he created a unique language, one that went unnoticed during his life, devoid of accolades and celebration, yet offering him a form of resolution for his mental turmoil.

Despite his mental health struggles, Vincent van Gogh was exceptionally productive. Within seventy days, he produced around 75 paintings and over a hundred sketches and drawings of the picturesque village of Auvers-sur-Oise, where he spent the final months of his life.

Remarkably, even in his later years of severe mental distress, van Gogh’s output remained incredibly high, showcasing his profound commitment to his craft.

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3. Clara Schumann: a devotion to harmony

Clara Schumann, the wife of Robert Schumann, was one of the greatest pianists of the 19th century. Several times, she was obliged to cancel concerts due to hand strain, notably when she was practicing Brahms's 1st concerto. She was a brilliant pianist, composer, and teacher, and someone who pushed through a lot of physical and emotional hardships to keep creating. Like many pianists of her era, the dire intensity of her practice and performance schedule, plus the physical demands of 19th-century piano technique, contributed to strain and injuries.

When she couldn’t perform as intensely, she dedicated more time to teaching and composing. A mindful and nurturing way to shift her creative focus and pour her experience into serving the art.

We rarely talk about musicians and the physical bruises and injuries they endure for the harmony to reach our hearts. That song in our ears will now sound different, closer to the reality of its making.

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🤩 Creative awe and tools to heal

── ✦ Take care of that discomfort/bruise

• 📚 Draw Stronger is a must-read for any artist (A book that can become a life-changing tool to help you observe your practice and make pivotal changes to draw better. "Unlike professional athletes, professional artists can enjoy their craft for most of (if not all of) their lives.)

• 💪 How to paint with less pain? (A list of pain management tips and tricks you might want to incorporate into your workflow for progress, such as drawing on a wall, taking breaks, and using salt baths for aching areas.)

• 🧘🏻‍♀️ A stretch for your mid back (Have you ever stumbled upon content in your feed that was shared just in time? That was the case for

  Yoga For Tired People
  . Her video on stretching the neck helped me a lot, and I thought I’d share some of her essential exercises. And that name for her Substack is spot on!)

• 👩🏻‍⚕️ A medical point of view: managing hand pain for artists (A decoding of our structure, effort, and the pressure added to exercises, aimed at lessening the load and encouraging flexibility to relieve discomfort in the long term.)

• 📺 Have you tried visual meditations before? (These visual meditations combine playful yet subtle animations that encourage active focus and gentle reprogramming of the mind. If you’re curious, take a moment to watch and listen; it might just be the shift you’ve been looking for.)

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── ✦ Mindset recommendations

• 💬 You can disappear for a little while, and it’s ok (An uplifting and whimsical piece by

  Anugrah
  where she shares her learnings and ability to be kind throughout her journey and rhythm. I recommend bookmarking some of her pieces for when you need them.)

• 📚 Read with me: Canva a cultural shift (I read a glimpse of my upcoming book ‘‘Inspire Your Female Founders’ journey’’, a short read, and some thoughts on the era we live in concerning craft and democratization of design.)

• 🎙 Deep conversation with a founder (I met Peter Busk in Copenhagen in 2019. He was one of the guests on my first podcast, TASP. This conversation popped up as a joyful and proactive tool for any founder and also creative visionary. A conversation about what it takes to build a vision. Enjoy!)

Creativity is in every little curious experimentation.

Congrats, you made it to the end! Thank you for reading.
If you enjoy the content and believe in what I am building here, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You can find more ways to support the free posts here, I recently activated giving donations. It helps to keep these issues accessible to a larger audience while also expanding what creativity means.

I leave you with a masterpiece!
Sending yogi vibes 🧘🏽‍♀️
Keva.

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🎯 Do you need to ‘‘get your hands’’ on your vision, strategy, play, and purpose? Try these printables.

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