As early as grade school we learn that great art often emerges from the depths of human suffering, where pain, longing, and desire find a voice. Misery, melancholy, and the spectrum of emotions in between have fueled some of the most enduring works of art history. Van Gogh’s 1889 self-portrait, picturing a despondent, bandaged man wrought by mental illness, remains one of the most infamous—and romanticized—examples of the tortured artist’s primal need to create, even at his most disillusioned.
While the demon of suffering—its form, cause, and root—may differ from one person to the next, it’s the shared intensity of human emotion that binds us together. Some might even argue that suffering is a necessary precursor to excellent art and that depression is a catalyst for self-exploration and emotional release. We’ve all felt the heartache-induced urge to strum our dusty guitar, frenetically scribble a crimson red pen, or unleash a mad stream of thought onto a tear-stained page.
Virginia Woolf aptly captured the inexplicable beauty of emotional extremes in her second novel, Night and Day: “Tears rose slowly in her eyes and stood there, brimming but contained. The tears of some profound emotion, happiness, grief, renunciation; an emotion so complex in its nature that to express it was impossible.” The struggle of stringing words together in a way that adequately conveys human emotion is immense—one that has driven artists and writers to fiction and abstraction for centuries.
Indeed, the relationship between pain and creativity persists in our tech-driven society, shaping not just the art of the past but some of the most provocative and celebrated contemporary artworks of today. Consider the gargantuan, demonic sculptures of Thomas Houseago, who credits art with saving his life and freeing him from the hellish prison of his own mind. Or the celebrity artist Yayoi Kusama, whose Instagram-famous “Infinity Rooms” are both an artistic statement and a coping mechanism for her hallucinations and lifelong struggles with mental illness. Creativity continues to be not only a means of self-expression but a form of survival.
At Bond & Grace, we are continually moved by the emotional depths our artists plumb as they translate literary themes into deeply personal visual language. With each new Art Novel, we see how moments of despair, isolation, and fear in classic literature can become fertile ground for some of the most provocative artworks in our collection. Below, we highlight four works featured in our Art Novels—Frankenstein, Alice in Wonderland, and The Secret Garden—that embrace vulnerability and assure healing for all who engage with them.
In Agony of Despair, Central Virginia–based painter Michelle Gagliano confronts the torment of her own inner demons—“the fear of failure, being lost, inner questioning, and constant doubt,” she says. Inspired by the chilling scene in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when Victor discovers the monster has murdered his wife, Michelle’s visceral work is both deeply unsettling and strangely consoling. A crimson-red handprint stretches outward, a desperate final plea, framed by a gilded halo and a deep forest-green backdrop—a reminder that even in the wake of terror and violence, regeneration is possible. Strongly connected to the earth, Michelle centers the monster’s journey through the framework of the natural world, exploring how nature’s extremes provide a mirror and balm to our own inner consciousness.
For the Harlem-based multidisciplinary artist Mekia Machine, the trauma and societal ostracism that the monster experiences evokes the erasure of her deceased ancestors, friends, and loved ones who have been forgotten. Frankenstein is, after all, a story largely about loss—the loss of the author’s mother and sister (who died in childbirth and by suicide, respectively), Victor’s loss of courage, and a modernizing society’s loss of compassion. In Dead Lovers No. 15, brightly colored abstract evocations of fractured limbs dance with each other, capturing Mekia’s sorrow over the loss of a cherished friend who drowned while trying to migrate to the United States. The work’s vibrant colors and movement-filled shapes speak to the power of Mekia’s memories, offering a reclamation of what she lost.
While certainly a more uplifting text than Frankenstein, The Secret Garden has its own thorns. The 1911 children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett features the orphaned Mary Lennox who is sent to live in the vast and gloomy Misselthwaite Manor. Toronto-based artist Julia Hacker’s Glimmer of Hope in a Quite Dead Garden captures the lifeless garden that Mary discovers at the manor and eventually nurtures to health, illustrating the barren neglect of the once-beautiful oasis whose winding branches appear like barbed wire. Julia’s color palette, full of gray blues, straw beiges, and menacing blacks, beautifully captures the melancholy of winter and its corresponding woes. Like Mary’s healing garden, our psychological state deteriorates when we withhold what it needs to bloom.
While re-reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the New York-based Italian-American painter Isabella Ronchetti was flooded with memories from her complicated childhood. A deep thinker whose work is largely influenced by the psychic automatism of the Surrealists, Isabella saw her younger self in Alice’s inner struggles and embraced the opportunity to reframe Alice’s story in her paintings. Featuring a downcast Alice crouching in despair, Welling Up smartly situates Alice perched atop a die precariously balanced above her own pool of tears. The choice is hers, Isabella suggests—will Alice confront her sadness and embrace the strange journey ahead, or break in the face of the unknown?
While our next Art Novel title is yet to be announced, its themes of pain, desire, and longing are already fueling the inner darkness of our next Art Collective. Keep following the Bond & Grace journey for more contemporary artworks steeped in depth, complexity, and profound emotion.
