Art & Alexithymia.

Written By Siobhan McMorran

I have recently been trying to read up and learn more about artists with alexithymia and how alexithymia might show up or present itself in someone’s art practice, and whether there are any common patterns or characteristics that appear across different artists. Before reading into this topic I wasn’t entirely sure what would come from it. With my understanding of alexithymia still being relatively new, and largely based on what I have started to learn about myself, part of this research was simply curiosity. I wanted to see whether there might be another angle or aspect of my own work and practice that could reveal itself through looking at how others navigate similar experiences.

Alexithymia is often described as a difficulty in identifying and describing emotions. This does not mean that emotions are absent, but rather that the process of recognising and articulating them can be less direct. Because of this, expression can sometimes take alternative routes. Instead of being processed through language, emotions may be navigated through physical sensations, actions, or creative practices. In this sense, art can sometimes act as a kind of intermediary space where internal experiences take form without needing to be fully articulated first.

Interestingly, it has been quite difficult to find artists who openly discuss having alexithymia. There are relatively few examples of artists explicitly naming it as part of their experience, which has made this research a little slower and more fragmented than I expected. Most of the time it has involved following small threads across interviews, exhibitions, and academic papers rather than finding clear case studies of artists working directly with the subject. Because of this, I suspect this will remain an ongoing line of research within my practice, both as a way of understanding the work I make and also as a way of understanding myself a little better.

One idea that appeared repeatedly while looking into the subject was a slightly unexpected one. Some research suggests that people engaged in creative pursuits may actually show lower levels of alexithymia than the general population. At first this seemed counterintuitive. Creative practices are often associated with emotional expression, and it might be easy to assume that someone who struggles to identify emotions would find this more difficult. However, the suggestion within some studies is that creative activity itself can become a way of developing emotional awareness over time. When emotions cannot easily be described verbally, they may still be explored through colour, texture, sound, movement, or form. Through the repeated process of making, something that is initially difficult to articulate can slowly become more visible.

Another idea that I came across was the suggestion that for some artists the process of making work functions less as direct expression and more as a kind of translation. Rather than beginning with a clearly defined emotional intention, the work emerges through responding to materials, marks, and forms until something begins to surface. The emotional content of the work often becomes clearer in hindsight, once the piece already exists.

This idea of translation resonates quite strongly with my own experience of painting. The landscapes that appear in my work rarely feel as though they are constructed from scratch. Instead they often feel as though they are already there in some form, waiting to be uncovered. The process becomes one of slowly building layers of ink and responding to what begins to emerge, rather than deliberately planning an image from the outset. At times it feels almost like using a reverse eraser, gradually revealing something that has been hidden beneath the surface rather than placing it there intentionally.

Another observation that appears occasionally in discussions around alexithymia and creativity is the impulse to fill the entire visual space. There can be a noticeable tendency to work across the whole surface of a canvas or page, leaving very little empty space. Some researchers suggest that this may be connected to the idea of containment, where the physical act of filling the space becomes a way of processing something internally through movement and repetition rather than verbal reflection.

When I think about my own work through this lens, the urge to fill the page feels quite familiar. Very rarely do I leave large sections of a painting untouched. There is often a strong pull to continue working across the surface until every part of the composition feels resolved in some way. Until recently I had never questioned this instinct very much, but reading about alexithymia has made me wonder whether there may be something happening there that is less conscious and more instinctive.

What I find particularly interesting about all of this is the idea that art may not simply be a tool for expressing emotions, but also a way of discovering them. The act of making becomes a space where something internal can take shape before it is fully understood. Meaning often arrives afterwards, once the work already exists in front of you.

At the moment this is still very much an early area of research for me, and the available material is surprisingly limited. There are relatively few artists openly discussing alexithymia in relation to their work, which makes it difficult to identify clear patterns across practices. However, the idea that creative work can act as a bridge between internal experience and external form feels particularly compelling. It suggests that art is not only about communicating what we already know, but also about uncovering things that we might not yet have the words for.

References:

Siobhan McMorran
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