How Childhood Trauma Becomes Art

Childhood trauma shapes our lives in ways both obvious and subtle. It also, often, offers the perfect conditions for finding our work in the world, if we are brave enough to face it. So it was for expressionist artist Clyfford Still.

Still’s childhood trauma began in the wheat fields of Canada, where his father used him as slave labor, cutting wheat. It was backbreaking work that often left his hands bloody, notes a documentary on his life and life’s work.

At one point, Still’s father dug for a well. To see if he had hit water yet, he tied a rope to his son’s ankle and lowered him down the well, head first. As you might guess, this early childhood trauma followed Still the rest of his life. It is evident in his artwork, which invariably includes a long, light-colored or red-colored, vertical line that runs down the middle of a dark background.

I don’t know what Still was feeling when he created such art, but I can’t help but think that each time he picked up a paintbrush, he confronted that early childhood trauma, and re-storied some part of it and his own fears.

Still was a nonconformist. He held himself to high standards creatively, and used his art, as most artists and writers do, to work through emotional entanglements and the childhood trauma that invariably is part of that. Today, his work stands out. There is even a museum dedicated to him, located in Denver.

Childhood trauma offers us two paths for working with it. We can see it as a burden, a heavy stone to drag around. But we can also choose to face it and re-story it. In that act, the pathology becomes a mythology, the victim a hero. 

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, designs narrative- and game-based learning. She also writes and speaks about the power of story in our lives and world. www.cultureshape.com