We Must Imagine the Artist Happy: Creation in the Face of the Absurd
This life is all we have. We, along with everything else, will exist once and then never again. This reality is neither a blessing nor a curse; it is an invitation to choose how we want to live. The most fundamental choice we have is whether to continue living at all. Albert Camus confronts this choice in The Myth of Sisyphus, asking whether life is worth living in a world without inherent meaning. In my family, many have chosen to leave this world early. Two of my uncles took their own lives, and my father has come close more than once. Yet, we do not shy away from conversations of death. When staring into the bleakness of the absurd, suicide can seem like the most obvious response. But, The Myth of Sisyphus offers another path-- one that does not deny the struggle of living in absurdity but embraces it. Like Sisyphus’s labor, creation is the only way we can exist in an absurd world. Through making art, my family and I have found meaning not in the world itself but in shaping it—expressing the absurdity of existence rather than being consumed by it.
Two years ago, my dad almost committed suicide. A sophomore in college, I stood on my apartment balcony looking at the joy and possibility of my future. While at the phone in my ear, I was confronted with the weight of the darkest moment in my life. I was at the crossroads between hope and despair. After I hung up the phone, I cried and laughed because I realized life was nothing if not absurd.
Camus defines the absurd as the tension between two opposing forces. “‘It’s absurd’ means ‘It’s impossible’ but also ‘It’s contradictory.’” Once you stare directly into the absurd, there is no looking away. My dad survived, and for that, I am overjoyed. But my joy is absurd—one day, he will die. Whether it was two years ago, tomorrow, or fifty years from now makes little difference in the grand scheme of things. I, too, will be gone someday, and the memory of my existence will eventually disappear. Suicide is, in many ways, a logical response to this reality. And yet, for whatever reason, my response to the absurd was to create.
Two years ago, I rediscovered my love for making art. As a child, I created freely, joyfully splashing colors onto page after page. I worshipped the feeling of creating. But as I grew older, I became consumed by the need to be the "perfect artist." Every sketch had to prove something. I agonized over imperfections and resigned my work for an imaginary audience. I worshipped recognition. After my collision with the absurd, I started creating with an intensity I had not experienced since childhood. For many years, I was afraid to try new mediums and techniques, but suddenly, the fear evaporated, and I immersed myself in oils, acrylics, and gouache paints. I signed up for a ceramics class and fell in love with it. I made ugly and beautiful things, but their beauty and ugliness seemed unimportant. Only in the last two years have I begun to identify with the label of artist.
Art, like life, is a fundamentally fruitless endeavor. I will die, and so will my creations. I may receive recognition for my talent through praise or money, yet these will also disappear. The seeming pointlessness and drudgery of creation makes Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his boulder uphill, the perfect model of the artist. He labors not for a final masterpiece but for the act itself, knowing full well that his work will never be finished, never truly “matter.” He cannot escape his futile reality through death, and yet, as Camus writes, “We must imagine Sisyphus happy”. There is a quiet triumph in his repetition, persistence, and refusal to succumb to despair. The artist, like Sisyphus, does not create to prove a point or achieve some ultimate reward. They create because the creation itself is an act of defiance, a way to shape the absurd into something tangible and express the inexpressible feeling of being human.
The quickest way to irritate an artist is to pester them with questions about the meaning of their work. Ask them about their process, however, and they will become exuberant. My process looks something like this: An idea emerges. It may take many forms, but the point is that something about it resonates with me. It rattles around my mind for days or weeks until I can make it real. I plan loosely—maybe with a few sketches—but once I begin, I dive off the deep end. For example, let's imagine that I am making an oil painting.
First, I apply a thin layer of color. Then, I block in light and dark areas to create rough shapes. The shapes are slowly refined by layering colors and mixing paint until an image forms. I often stop and step back to examine the painting from different angles. I let layers dry for days or weeks, considering what must come next—what colors, what details will bring it closer to what I see in my mind. I take the canvas off the easel and place it on the floor; I take it outside to see it in a different light. As with pushing a boulder uphill, this is a difficult labor. My eyebrows knit in concentration, my back and neck hurt from contorting my body around the canvas, and my eyes grow tired from scrutinizing fine details. I finish the work with a signature. And then—well, that’s it. The boulder rolls back down the hill, and the process begins again.
The most potent image of the artist is the tortured, depressed genius archetype. This artist is a tragic soul who creates amazing things because they are so tortured. While it is a wildly overblown, tired trope, its cultural persistence is based on a morsel of truth. People are drawn to the creative process to cope with the despair and pain that comes from life. Just as the Gods condemn Sisyphus to push the boulder for eternity. We are condemned to be alive, knowing that we will be forgotten. Though we have the choice of whether to end our lives by our own hands, most of us do not. So why, then, do we choose to stay alive and condemned to a pointless existence? Because it is meaningless only if we choose to see it that way. Of Sisyphus, Camus writes, “His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing”. For us creatives, we make our fate belong to us by making our art a thing.
In psychology, there is a term to describe the state of being utterly immersed in a task—it's called flow. To enter a flow state is a delicate balance; the task must be challenging but not impossible, engaging but not overwhelming. It is something that can be achieved, but not without effort. To be in flow, one must exist in the antinomy of the human condition—between struggle and ease, between mastery and uncertainty. Flow is only found in the absurd, yet it is an experience of profound well-being. In flow, time dissolves, and we are entirely and undeniably present in our experience. Flow, to me, is the ultimate state of living.
Although the concept did not yet exist, I argue that the Sisyphus Camus describes is in a flow state. Pushing the boulder up the hill, he was challenged, but the task was possible. He pushes and pushes in a state of complete presence. When he reaches the top, the boulder rolls down again, giving him a new opportunity to be in flow. It is a cycle without end, but within that cycle, there is purpose—not in completion, but in the doing itself.
Art is a uniquely powerful tool in our existence, not just because it induces the experience of flow, but because it allows us to confront the absurd without fear. To be in flow is to surrender to the moment, to accept the absurd without resisting it. But the moment we become too aware of flow, it vanishes—just as meaning collapses under too much scrutiny. The absurd demands that we live without certainty, without final answers. This is the same with art; each work can be interpreted in infinite ways. There is never one single meaning. Through art, we do not resolve the absurd—we inhabit it. We take the weight of existence and shape it into something tangible, even if its tangibility is fleeting.
Art invites all to engage with their own experience of the absurd, creating a bridge between us as isolated individuals. The absurd is the thing that truly connects us all. Humans have always turned to creation as a means of expression and a way to grapple with the fundamental uncertainty of existence. In our physical and ideological creations, we also create connections. Creation enables us to understand that although we may face absurdity in our own way, we are all in it together. Recognition of the absurd, therefore, does not negate joy and happiness. As Camus writes, “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It also happens that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness”. Some of the greatest happiness can be born in connections formed through creation and the shared experience of the absurd.
Some of my greatest joys in recent years have been connecting with others through the experience of creating. Isn’t it extraordinary that we, in all our insignificance, can shape the absurd into something tangible? Humans make meaning, not because it exists, but because creating it keeps us alive. My dad is a musician and credits both the creation of his art and the creation of me as the things that saved his life. Again and again, he stood on the edge of death and decided that the feeling of creation was worth sticking around for. I am grateful for creation for helping him stick around.
I choose not to die because I am curious about what life has to offer. I do not know whether there is an afterlife, so I live as if there isn’t. I can exist, or I cannot. It just so happens that I exist right now. And while I exist, I will create. When I am anguished and tied up in absolutes, I say to myself: Here I am. And where is here? It is, as Camus says, in antinomy—between opposites, in the absurd. Here I am, I say. What else is there to do but do? And so, I create.
