Bonds of Experience
by Ksenia Kirkbride
Oil on canvas
61 × 51 cm
2025
"The individual history of each creative person almost always balances on the brink of illness; unlike other people, he is not inclined to heal personal wounds acquired during development through ever greater adaptation to the collective. His wounds remain open, but the suffering from them reaches depths from which another healing force arises, and this healing force is the creative process.
As the myth states, only a person who has suffered can be a healer, a doctor. Through his personal suffering, the creative person feels the serious illnesses of his collective and his time; deep within himself, he carries a regenerating force capable of healing not only himself but also society."
Erich Neumann, "The Creative Man and Transformation"