Despite the many challenges Friday Kahlo experienced in her life, she found creative ways to support her well-being, share her experiences, and create with purpose to inspire others even today. Here are 7 creative lessons from Frida Kahlo.
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for her many self-portraits and works inspired by the nature and culture of Mexico. She painted 143 self-portraits, exploring themes such as identity, the human body, and death using bold colors and a style described as surrealism or magical realism. She is considered one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, a trailblazing feminist in politics, LGBTQ+ icon, and helped draw attention to Mexican and indigenous culture through art that continues to inspire hope, power, and empowerment.
Self-Love - Embrace and Love What Makes You Different
“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.”
Frida Kahlo was not conventional and didn’t follow the beauty standards and rules set by others. Possibly because of the suffering she experienced regularly, she learned early on the importance of self-love and acceptance.
Kahlo never made an effort to change herself for the benefit of others. Refusing to shave her armpits, or unibrow, she embraced who she was and found inspiration and love in herself. Not only did she put herself in her artwork, but she also made herself a piece of art that expressed herself. She Wore bright and colorful clothing, accessories, and flowers. She embodied her creativity.
Tips
- Stop comparing yourself to others – Embrace yourself and your journey to unlock a more personal and deeper creativity that can thrive.
- Don’t worry about others’ opinions – Focus on being creative for yourself first and foremost.
- Be kind to yourself – Use creativity as a tool to practice compassion and self-love daily.
Persevere - We Can Endure All Suffering
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”
Frida Kahlo was no stranger to pain and suffering. As a young child, she suffered from polio, then later, she would be in a bus accident that caused her to spend much of her life in hospitals and surgery. Beyond this, she experienced heartbreak from many affairs her husband, Diego Rivera, had, which only added to her depression. Yet despite all this suffering, she loved to live and turned her pain into creative expression.
Overcoming challenges elevates us and reveals strengths and truths about ourselves that we might not have discovered under comfortable conditions. For creatives like Kahlo, adversity becomes an opportunity. Maybe it’s an experience with a problem that inspires a novel solution or a creative expression that can be shared to inspire and give strength to others. Suffering and challenges are opportunities to ignite the creative process and unlock novel solutions.
Tips
- Turn adversity into opportunity – What can be learned from the challenge and turned into a solution to overcome it and help others?
- Reflect and practice self-compassion – View challenges as opportunities to learn more about yourself and grow as a creative.
- Shift focus – Instead of dwelling on the negativity, redirect focus towards a purpose.
Let Go of Control and Go With the Flow
“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”
Frida never planned to become an artist, but life had other plans. Before her bus accident, she wanted to become a doctor, but as a result of being bedridden, she turned to art. When life knocked her down, she found ways to express herself. Instead of holding on to things outside her control, she let go and went with the flow, and discovered new things about herself and what she could be.
It’s not always easy to let go, and sometimes we fall back. Frida turned to drinking many times in her life to drown her sorrows, which of course, never solved the problem or healed her wounds. It was only when she let go that she found freedom, healing, and happiness.
Tips
- Be gentle and compassionate with yourself – Letting go doesn’t happen immediately. It’s a process.
- Feel your emotions, but don’t let them control you – Don’t repress or avoid what you’re feeling. Acknowledge and experience the emotions and gain a better understanding so you can heal and let go.
- Separate what you can control and what you cant – Let go of what you can’t control and focus on what you can.
Feel Your Feelings (And Don't Apologize For It)
“You deserve the best, the very best, because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts.”
When you look at Frida’s artwork, you know what she was feeling, such as the pain and suffering in The Broken Column (1944) or Henry Ford Hospital (1932). Frida used her creativity to express herself unapologetically. Artwork like journaling or meditation was a process of exploring and working through her feelings and experiences.
Pain and suffering are inevitable in life. Feelings can’t be suppressed forever. They will continue to build until they explode in unhealthy ways. Feel your feelings but don’t let them control or dictate your life. In zen, calmness isn’t an absence of emotions. It’s an awareness that brings insight to the experience to grow and learn from the emotions.
Frida used her creativity to claim power and control over her suffering. She didn’t let her challenges silence or stop her from living a creative life worthy of enjoying. It never mattered if people didn’t like her art, her politics, or her sexuality. She was going to express her feelings and live the life she wanted because creative expression revealed truths about her nature and helped her grow and overcome hardships.
Tips
- What is this? – When feelings and emotions rise, ask yourself this question to dive deeper and find insights to grow.
- Use creativity to understand how you feel – Whether it’s journaling, drawing, painting, dancing, or another creative hobby, express and explore what you’re feeling through creativity to grow and understand yourself better.
- Every feeling has a message – Processing your feelings is like working through the creative process of problem-solving. Work through them to access your own inner wisdom and innate creativity.
Seek Out Beauty - Life Is Better With Color
“I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.”
When you spend a good portion of your life recovering in hospitals where the walls are usually gray and lifeless, the moment you get out can feel like you’re seeing the world in a whole new way. Color carries new meaning and purpose, and life is certainly better with color.
Frida loved color. You can see it in her creative work, fashion, and home. She surrounded herself with vibrant colors because no matter how painful or challenging life maybe, she was going to have color. Even in her painful works of art, you’ll find vibrant colors.
Surrounding oneself with color is a great way to combat anxiety and improve well-being. You may not be able to control the challenges and suffering in your life, but you can change your perspective and how you approach life. Even when times are tough, you can add color to remember there’s always hope. There’s always beauty in the world.
Tips
- Slow down and practice gratitude – When your mind begins to race, slow down and observe the world around you to ground and remind yourself of the beauty at this moment.
- Decorate your creative space with color – Surround yourself with colors and plants to support mood and productivity.
- Go for a walk in nature– Connect with the colors of nature to enhance creative ways of thinking.
Always Find Humor in Your Life
“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.”
No matter how hard life might be or the challenges one must face, laughing gives you a break and eases tension. There’s strength in humor. If you’re only focusing on the negativity, you’re only adding to the stress, but if you make time to laugh, you release chemicals in the body that promote well-being and happiness. Much like the incubation phase in the creative process, this break free’s the mind to help find solutions and
You might not know it from her portraits and photos where she is often serious and stoic because she was self-conscious of her smile, but Frida loved to laugh and joke with others. She had a very eccentric sense of humor and also loved to make others laugh. Even when she was confined to a wheelchair, she made an effort to make others feel good. Her laugh was described as carcajadas, a deep and contagious laughter.
Frida knew suffering all too well and how exhausting it can be to only focus on the negative. Art and creativity were her way of feeling the pain and moving through it, but you can’t focus on negativity forever. There’s always color, beauty, and humor to be found and help heal and enjoy life. As she says, there’s strength in laughter that lightens the load to help you overcome the ridiculousness of tragedy.
Tips
- Laughter is the best medicine – Studies have found that laughing has many positive physical effects on the body including, stress relief, fighting memory loss, stimulating organs, strengthening the immune system, relieving pain, and improving mood.
- Connect with others through laughter – Scientists are still studying this, but some believe that laughter may have evolved as a way to enhance connectedness in societies.
Embrace and Love Your Roots
“They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
The daughter of a German father and a Mexican mother of indigenous descent, Frida Kahlo was deeply influenced by her culture, especially indigenous Mexican culture. She employed a naïve folk art style to explore identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society.
In a post-revolutionary Mexico, Frida’s art helped forge a proud new identity for Mexicans and reconnect with their roots. She used her art and fashion to express her roots and culture even when creating art in the US. History and culture were important to her, especially when artists were copying European fashions and styles. She wasn’t going to change herself to any semi-colonial conditions that had hurt Mexico in the past.
Connecting and expressing her Mexican culture and roots was the key to self-expression. Understanding where she came from helped guide her forwards. The past encompassed the present. This ethic of Mexicanidad was expressed on all levels of Frida’s creative life, from her fashion, the decoration of her home, and of course, her artwork. By embodying this purpose in all aspects of her creative life, her messages and themes from her art had more life and meaning. Not only was it a style, but a political stance and psychological support. Values must be aligned with actions.
Tips
- Dive into your own culture and family history – Learn more about yourself through the story of your own family and culture.
- Learn from other cultures to discover new perspectives – Try hobbies, eat different cultural cuisines, read travel stories, and more to broaden your perspectives.
Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
