“I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art.”
— Yayoi Kusama
From Kusama's autobiography 'Infinity Net' (2002), describing how art became her way of surviving lifelong mental illness and hallucinations.
Since I was ten years old, the world has come at me covered in dots and nets that nobody else can see. In 1958 I arrived in New York with dollars sewn into my kimonos, painting on doors I found in the garbage because I could not afford canvas. The hallucinations never stopped. But every time I pick up a brush, they quiet down. Whatever is tearing you apart right now, find the thing that makes the noise go quiet. Then do it every day. Not because it fixes you. Because it keeps you alive.