Art Addiction

Have I always been this way? An addict? 

My earliest thoughts are of me drawing religiously. An infinite need to feed some creative beast that demanded more and more of me over time. 

I want to pretend that I was doing something high minded but maybe I was just staving off boredom in a time before iPhones sucked up every minute of down time. 

What’s interesting to me is that phones seem to feel the addictive nature of human beings. I’ve tried to tackle this subject in the past. Sorta stumbled through a series of paintings before getting sucked into something else. 

I’m fascinated by addiction because its fueled my entire life. 

In art they call it passion, but I think passion is fueled by love whereas I’m fueled by something else… 

Don’t get me wrong, I love making art, but I need to make it. I can’t function as a person if I’m not making something. 

I’ve used drugs and alcohol over the years to numb this clawing of thoughts from tearing me up from the inside out but it never works for long. 

The only way to stop myself from feeling crazy or anxious is to paint. Its my fix. 

I’ve argued about it with my sister. She thinks I’m blessed because I have my thing. My thing that I would do anything for. My thing that I’ll suffer through because its that important to me that I’ve given up relationships and jobs and suffered so that I could continue to feed this thing.

She’s content in whatever job she has but says she envies the fact that I have passion for what I do.

I think about how I can’t sleep cause the moment I wake up my mind is going. What to make, how to fix, where to take the next one and the next. I have a queue of paintings fighting for attention in my mind at all times of day. 

I read about people suffering artists block and I wonder if that would feel like a vacation for me or if the clawing thoughts would get so loud I’d do something dangerous. 

It feels like a curse sometimes. When I can’t provide my family with what they need cause sales are slow. I wrestle with taking on other jobs because I’ve always been good at “real jobs”. They come easily to me. But this selling yourself and your art and marketing and elbow rubbing has always been hard. 

I imagine its like getting out of rehab and having to be social and biting your nails at all the triggers going off around you as you try to talk yourself out of a fix. 

Painting is such a weird addiction because you’re simultaneously in love with the feeling of control and the loss of it. Like riding a good buzz.

I don’t know if other artists suffer from this but it feels wildly unhealthy at times and pure joy at others. 

My wife calls it giving birth. They process I go through with each painting. 

But she only sees the paintings I’m working on, she doesn’t see the obsessive thoughts that cloud my mind and ruin our relationship. She doesn’t see me work on a painting in my mind for days, months, years at a time before it finally hits the canvas.

I just finished an oil painting about Alcohol Addiction called, “The Illusion of Choice” that I’ve been wrestling with for over a year. Since before I got sober back in January 2025. 

519 when I finished. 

523 as of writing this.

I don’t know who I would be if I went 523 day without making art. 

Whats funny to me is that if you had called my art practice an addiction in the past I might have laughed at you because I too believed it was passion. 

Being sober allows you to look at yourself from a 30,000 foot view. You see the patterns and habits and doing a painting like this really forces you to dig deep. I talked about alcohol feeling like an old friend that I’ve grown apart from. 

You miss the good times but forget the conflict. 

I talk about not wanting to be defined by this thing thats taken so much from me and given so little. I think theres and argument that painting is different in that its given me everything. 

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take things too.

I had a career before. I had money. I was on my way to an easier life and I walked away from it for art.

Alcohol gives you liquid courage, whats the painted equivalent? I’ll go to a museum and feel like I belong there. Is that just delusions of grandeur? 

But I’m not there so I self medicate every day, driving myself towards the edge. I used to say there is a thin line between genius and madness so I lived recklessly hoping I’d figure out the difference. 

Now I’m old and casting away all these old numbing agents. I don’t know if my body could even handle the excitement of all those old parties. The reality is that I have no interest in any of them anymore. 

I’m interested in painting. I’m interested in the feel of paint being applied to the canvas. The smell of paint being mixed on the palette. 

I’m interested in how colors work together. I’m interested in narrative and the loss of control over an idea that becomes bigger than what I originally thought. I’m interested in how I can attack a canvas with a plan and watch it all go sideways for better and worse and all the other paintings that are born in that struggle.

I’m interested in far too many kinds of art. While I plot out my next addiction painting I’m thinking about flowers and how to paint them as memories or dreams. 

Last night I wast thinking about my addiction series and realized the most important addiction in my life is the only one I haven’t thought about painting. 

How would I even go about painting about my addiction to art? Would it just be self indulgent or would people related the way they do to a painting about alcohol or cigarettes? 

More scary, would painting and processing this thing help me overcome it and lose myself? 

I’m happy to quit drinking. 

I have moments where I miss it for sure but 95% of the time I feel free from something awful. 

Art saved my life. Alcohol was ruining it. 

Is this a healthy addiction then? Or is it something else? 

Does it even matter when I don’t feel like I have a choice? 

Or more importantly, that I’m ok with this, that I welcome it.

When I was in my late 20’s I came up with a series that I called, “Art is life is Art” where I was fighting an art version of myself that I’d brought to life. Its been pulling at me lately cause I’ve changed. 

Originally I gave up my life so that my art could live and replace me. As I’ve gotten older and had a family the narrative has shifted. I don’t know if I could give up my life or the people I love anymore.

But I also don’t know who I’d be without this thing thats driven me for so long. 

And maybe that series is the perfect vehicle to explore this idea of art addiction. I just have to finish up a couple other things first. Wrestle with in my mind, figure out the story and when its too loud, when it clawing at me from inside.

I’ll let it out.