One evening I walked down a hillside path near Kristiania —- together with two comrades. It was a time during which life had ripped open my soul. The sun went down. The sea dipped quickly under the horizon. It was as if a flaming sword of blood cut across the firmament. The hillsides became a deep blue. The fjord —- cut in a cold blue —- amongst yellow and red colors. That shrill, bloody red. On the road and the fence. The faces of my comrades became a garish yellow-white. I felt a huge scream welling up inside me —- and I really did hear a huge scream. The colors in nature —- broke the lines in nature. The lines and colors quivered with movement. These vibrations of light caused not only the oscillation of my eyes. My ears were also affected and began to vibrate. So I actually heard a scream. Then I painted The Scream.
- Edvard Munch from his journal as quoted in the book Munch, In His Own Words

Munch's best known painting, The Scream, arose out of a scream that welled up inside him, needing an outlet. A scream born of alienation?

Munch’s work endures because it came from somewhere deep inside. It was inspired by dreams, suffering and pain. His paintings plumbed the depths of the human experience: love, joy, death, sadness, sex, beauty, loss, pain, frustration, anger. They pack a punch. They sadden; his paintings enlighten. They embody an insanity that comes and goes, like the weather, like a loose cannon. But that particular cannon is not loose. The cannon knows the hole it wants to bang.

At the age of 46 he decided to live in solitude and focus on his art. He lived as a recluse until he died at the age of 81.

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What’s your deepest emotion? Do you harness it to give your creative work power?

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Read a little more about Munch, including a couple more excerpts from his journal, here.