When Picasso painted Guernica, one of his most famous works, I don’t think he was whistling happily to himself. No, he was angry. Outraged at the Nazis and Italian Fascists who had bombed this defenseless Spanish town, killing thousands of innocent people.
For most of us, anger amounts to stress, and the worst type of stress at that. But for artists, anger can be a positive force. If focused and channeled into a piece of work, it is capable of producing something of great profundity.
When you are intent on putting a great wrong right, creativity will often exceed all expectations. Out of conflict comes purpose.
Take Charles Dickens as another example. He devoted himself to chronicling the terrible injustices of his day in his novels. Do you think he was happily whistling away when he wrote A Christmas Carol? I don’t. The opening line of that book is ‘Marley was dead.’ It’s not exactly the light-hearted tone of ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.’
Years ago I was working on an anti-smoking campaign and feeling upset at the idea that secondary smoke was harming children. The poster I helped to create featured a toddler smoking a cigarette under the headline, ‘How many cigarettes a day does your child smoke?’ It was hugely effective in raising awareness and changing behavior. Being angry made it happen.
So get angry but don’t let it eat you up. Instead, find a piece of paper, a canvas, anything, and get it out of you. You’ll be amazed at how therapeutic this can be. And how creative.