Growing up in Chicago, Nicole Clark was steeped in the visual arts. But by adulthood, she had given up her creative pursuits, except for some occasional writing.

“It was a desert of creativity for many years,” says Clark, who moved to Baltimore in 2010 for better job opportunities. But after a divorce at the age of 30, Clark returned to her creative life. “It came out of necessity for my mental health,” she says. “I was not aware that I was in a season of depression.”

One day, Clark found some abandoned wood panels and took them home to use as a canvas for her paint. “I did not have a community in Baltimore at the time,” she says. “I needed artwork for the apartment I moved to after my divorce. I was like, ‘I’ll make art for my walls.’ Initially, in the absence of having a community, it was feeding my soul,” she says.

Some 11 years later, it’s taken on an even deeper meaning.

“It took me years to understand the creative process and the healing that can bring,” explains Clark. “My work is a lot like writing an essay: You write to answer a question, but sometimes you don’t know what the question is. My paintings are a means for me to understand what’s going on beneath the surface. Once I finish a piece and step back, it’s a reflection of a question that was ruminating. As my creative processes have crystallized, I began to realize my art was like my writing—it was a portal to understand what was happening at a subconscious level.”

Below, Clark gives us a deeper look at the process behind two of her works.

King of Sorrow

“King of Sorrow originated when I was doing research on Norse mythology and I found this symbol for the Valkyrie. I decided that the female warrior was going to be the ethos of the piece. I didn’t have a studio at the time, so I was painting in the basement of my apartment building.

“It was winter and it was dark. I can look back now and see that I was going through a very, very dark depression. I was struggling with suicidal ideation and really lost my sense of identity. I was trying to will this female empowerment, this Valkyrie, but the composition of the piece wasn’t working.

“As part of my process, I would turn the canvases around. One night I flipped the canvas and stared it for a while. As I stared at it, I saw this profile, this silhouette of a closed eye and a tear coming down. At that time my neighbor and I would have porch sits and she’d play guitar and she played Sade’s ‘King of Sorrow’—I’d never heard the song before. I started crying quietly.

“Later that week, I had that song on repeat while I was finishing the piece. That was the song that informed putting the crown on the image—I was trying to will a sense of hope in my own life and I was playing with genders, as well—a woman can be a King of Sorrow. I was trying to add this sense of majesty and honor to the darkness with the crown.

“Painting it was a means to give form to this otherwise murky time. It is probably one of the most powerful pieces I’ve ever done and gave some meaning and purpose to that dark time.”

I Took Apart the Sky for You

“My brother who dabbles in music had just written these lyrics, ‘I took apart the sky for you and left it there for you to see,’ which became the name of the piece. He was the one I called and who continued to check on me and offered me an affirming experience of reaching out and encouraged me to get help in a really powerful way.

“He was the one who really helped me in the moment. He was not afraid to ask the hard questions—and when he asked me how I was, he was willing to hear an answer of ‘not that great.’

“He went to hell and back to help me understand joy again. For me, ‘I Took Apart the Sky for You’ means showing unconditional love and the lengths that I felt my brother would go to help me.”