What We Bring to the Canvas

When my son was in middle school, he brought home a book about Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter known for his emotional use of color. I don’t remember him ever being particularly interested in artists, so it must have been for a school assignment.

For some reason, though, the book caught my attention. Maybe it was something eye-catching on the cover, or maybe it was just one of those moments where something unexpected pulls you in. I picked it up, started flipping through the pages, and before I knew it, I had read it cover to cover. I learned something about myself that day—I really enjoy art.

Edvard Munch’s The Scream mesmerized me. The swirling sky. The distorted figure. The sense that everything is closing in at once. It’s not just something you look at—it’s something you feel. I know, because sometimes when I am feeling overwhelmed and there are no words, I still envision it.

Maybe that’s why art has such a powerful pull. It can express emotions we struggle to put into words. When we recognize ourselves in a work of art, we feel less alone.

Reading about Munch and the struggles in his life made me see his paintings in a different light. It also made me curious about other great artists and their stories—so many of them are best understood when you look beyond the paintings and into their biographies. In some cases, their work is intertwined with documented mental health issues, as with Vincent van Gogh, whose later life included severe episodes of distress, often remembered alongside the well-known story of his cutting off his ear.

When I stood in front of his self-portrait at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, I thought about how much his internal struggle may have shaped not only how he saw himself, but how he chose to represent that self on canvas.

I wonder how different Frida Kahlo’s work might have been if she had not experienced the physical and emotional trauma that became such a central part of her art. Or the way, Georgia O’Keeffe’s work was shaped by her own experiences of solitude, and periods of emotional struggle. Their paintings remind us that artists don’t simply paint what they see—they often paint what they feel.

I never paint my dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.

Frida Kahlo

My mom was a painter—not famous or professional, but someone who painted for friends and family. We often chose the subject of what she would paint, but I’ve come to think that her own emotions, and the way she saw the world at the time, still shaped the final result in ways we may not have fully realized.

It makes me wonder about how much our own view of the world is shaped by what we are carrying internally. The same scene, the same moment, even the same memory can look entirely different depending on our emotional state, our experiences, and our quiet struggles. In that sense, art may not only reflect the artist’s inner world, but also mirror something of our own as viewers.

And perhaps a painting is never only about what is on the canvas, but also about what we bring to it.