Does Migraine Affect Artistic Ability?

After a beginning-of-the-year painting spree, I couldn’t understand why I suddenly couldn’t paint with the same consistent results.

I pushed the canvas aside, furious and frustrated over all the paint I wasted for nothing. After a beginning-of-the-year painting spree, I struggled to understand why I couldn’t paint with the same consistent results.

I decided to self-soothe by switching gears and painting an easy subject my hand muscles knew by heart. I noticed the same results as I attempted to sketch a crow on a medium-sized canvas.

“I CAN’T EVEN DRAW A BIRD!”

The most furious eraser marks ever created.

This was a red flag.

I had a few artistic muses during childhood, most notably marine mammals and birds. When I got a pet cockatiel at 11, I had a real-life model for my drawing endeavors. I’d bring my bird downstairs and practice until I could draw my subject from memory. Nay, draw it with my eyes closed.

You now see how this was a problem.

Not only were my skills negatively altered, but my creative motivation was the lowest in months. In January, I churned out a record five paintings. I dreamt of participating in my first art market and was on the right path… until March.

Between March and April, I fought three chronic pain spells and one sickness. Two of the spells included days-long migraine attacks. In total, I lost three weeks of life on behalf of my busted body. I even threw up at an Iggy Pop concert, making the days I felt OK still riddled with obstacles.

And now you know why I went nearly six weeks between posts.

In May, when the winter-spring transition had passed and my biggest pain trigger was behind me, I tried again. Thankfully, my ‘powers’ returned. I was bamboozled.

“What happened? Why did my ability just go away?”

It didn’t make sense, especially with my recent artistic growth. I was the most confident I had ever been, tackling more challenging subjects and completing projects quicker than usual.

The more I thought about it, the more signs pointed to one source:

MIGRAINE.

Need your brain? Too bad!!

Migraine’s effect on cognition is something I’ve been exploring for a while. After nearly two decades living with the disease, I feel like I’ve mastered the pain management aspect of it. I have my little pharmacy, a flexible work life and a deeper understanding of key triggers. But there was still so much I didn’t know.

I feel fortunate that migraine is taken more seriously than it was a decade ago. I’m more knowledgeable about my disease than ever and Grand Rapids finally has a roster of headache specialists—a luxury I did not have prior to 2017.

That being said, migraine studies often have age in common, as many fall within the past five years. Four of the seven studies I examined for this piece were published between 2024 and 2025, with the oldest published in 2012. The other two sources have a 2016 and 2018 timestamp on them. Relative to medicine’s history, this is new information.

By now, we know migraine not only brings pain, but also complex cognitive side effects. If you’ve been here a while, you already know about migraine’s connection to transient aphasia. The disease is also connected to sleep and mental disorders. Basically, the whole brain is fair game with migraine.

I knew my chronic illness affected how my brain processed language. Could the same thing happen for art and creativity? Luckily, a few researchers had the same curiosity.

In 2024, researchers studied 31 patients with migraine and compared them with a control group consisting of 30 patients without migraine. In this study, the researchers focused on the “interictal” phase, or the time in between attacks.

The result?

The study “…provides evidence that migraine, even in the interictal period, reduces creative ideation and this may impact the quality of life of these individuals.”

There’s my answer.

Does migraine affect artistic ability?

Knowing my brain was in and out of attack mode for two months, it makes sense that my artistic abilities were caught up in the mess. When an attack was winding down and brain fog was starting to lift, another one would creep up behind me and knock me down.

I thought about the energy it took my brain to get back to homeostasis after experiencing days-long violence. No wonder my fine motor skills didn’t want to wake up.

I have my answer, but I still wanted more details. I dug deeper into the study and discovered migraine participants had subcategories: those with chronic migraine and those with episodic migraine.

My migraine attacks began episodic and turned chronic, which is defined by at least 15 headache days per month. Luckily, a balance of Botox, Magnesium and a low-stress work environment brought me back to episodic, however, that wasn’t the case earlier this year.

Having experience with both chronic and episodic migraine attacks, I was particularly interested in this area of the study.

As expected, those with chronic migraine fared worse, creatively wise. My ‘lost powers’ finally had an explanation—my brain was back to chronic mode, and that meant chronic side effects.

I read another study that examined how chronic and episodic migraine affects metacognition, which is the “knowledge and ability to understand, control, and manipulate one’s own cognitive processes.”

Guess what? Migraine messes that up, too. According to the study:

“We can conclude that migraine patients present metacognitive dysfunctions, especially in term[s] of a lower ability to control the cognitive process appointed to the implementation of a controlled behavior, in comparison to health[y] subjects.”

Metacognition interruption affects my art because it erases my ability to pull from previous learning experiences. Essentially, the strategies I learned on my own through artmaking went kaput. I hit factory reset as an artist.

Another challenge to navigate

I have my answers, but they don’t make me feel better.

I’ve come to terms with a lot of scary things about my body, and while this is just one more obstacle, it’s one that haunts me. My migraine attacks already make my words disappear, now I have to reckon with it taking my artistic ability?

The silver lining I’m forcing myself to see is how my disease makes art more precious to me. If I can’t regularly access my abilities, they become more scarce, adding value to them. Those good days are now more cherished than usual, my art pieces more meaningful.

Instead of having a meltdown about this boulder in my way, I’ll let it motivate me. I allowed myself to be afraid and stop trying for nearly two months and I have nothing to show for it. So, I plan to use my good days mindfully, which includes being more in tune with when they’re happening.

One thing that hasn’t changed is my style, which is relieving. I know neurological diseases can affect aesthetics in the arts, so it’s comforting that I always get my style back when I recover. I felt different a few years ago, however.

I used to hate my artistic style and would often let my cartoonish-looking subjects spin me into an impostor syndrome meltdown. Recently, I’ve been kinder to myself, choosing projects that cater to my strengths while adding challenging options here and there.

My friends have helped, too. Encouraging responses to my work have given me the confidence to continue. They also whisper, “You’re not as bad as you think.”

Like migraine, making art is a journey that never ends. There will be good and bad days, and it’s up to me to decide how I will manage them. Migraine almost took art away, but now I have the knowledge to prepare for the next attack.

I live with migraine, which affects how much work I can take on. On average, I lose one workweek a month to migraine attacks. Not a Fit for Our Publication is my way to raise funds to manage my disease while offering something in return. You can help me out by subscribing to Not a Fit for Our Publication, sharing the website, sharing a free blog post and gifting a subscription.

Graphic citation: Ruiz-Álvarez, L., Díez-Rodríguez, E., Cubillas, C. P., Soto-León, V., Pérez Borrego, Y. A., Parra, F. P., & Oliviero, A. (2024). Poor creativity in interictal migraine: A case–control pilot study. Cephalalgia Reports.