Exploring Creativity and Healing: Insights from a Doctor and a Cartoonist

Have you ever thought about how a minimalist sketch can reveal a world of emotion? In art, cartooning uniquely bridges creativity, healing, and human connection.

The Power of Cartooning as an Art Form

Navied Mahdavian, a New York–based cartoonist, boldly declares that cartooning is the highest form of art. He argues that in just a few precise lines, one can express joy, arrogance, sorrow, and every nuance in between. Each drawing begins with a playful experimentation: “I find that I recreate animation on my face,” he says, twisting and refining his own expressions while sketching [verify]. This continuous erasing and redrawing mirrors how cartoonists use simplicity to distill complex feelings.

“Each cartoon is a distilled form of emotion, capturing joy or sorrow with just a few lines.” — Navied Mahdavian

Mahdavian’s approach highlights how creativity in art does not demand elaborate detail; instead, it calls for emotional precision. In those few strokes, the viewer’s mind fills in the story, making cartooning a powerful tool for universal communication.

The Journey of Creation

Both Mahdavian and Amy Baxter, a pediatric emergency medicine physician and pain specialist, emphasize that creative projects carry emotional and cognitive weight. For Mahdavian, there is a clear distinction between sketching stand-alone cartoons and crafting a full-length book. His latest work, "This Land: Finding Home in Rural America (Really)," took three years of revisions, research, and reflective drawing before it reached publication. “Cartoons can be instant, humorous snippets,” he explains. “But a book demands a deeper commitment: a sustained narrative, consistent style evolution, and the tough reality that you’ll always want to redraw the beginning once you improve.”

In contrast, Baxter’s initial foray into visual scales began at her desk when she realized no standardized tool existed to measure nausea with the same rigor as pain scales. Collaborating with a programmer sibling and a professional cartoonist, she developed the BARF scale—a six-face animation gauge designed to help patients articulate discomfort visually. This project also evolved over several iterations, reflecting both scientific validation and artistic refinement.

Interpersonal Connections in New Environments

Mahdavian and Baxter explore how mobility and relocation impact one’s sense of home and community. Mahdavian, whose young daughter has lived in multiple cities across two countries, observes that children seem remarkably adaptable, but adults often struggle to form new social bonds. “We are always seeking stability amid constant change,” he notes, reflecting on concentric circles of belonging—from immediate family to broader community networks. Losing those familiar “banks” of support can feel destabilizing, prompting a deeper artistic exploration of what “home” truly means.

Baxter shares her own cross-cultural experiences as a physician and researcher, noting that shifting medical environments—from large urban hospitals to rural clinics—taught her how values and trust form the bedrock of effective collaboration. Both agree that understanding and empathy are essential ingredients for meaningful connections in any new setting.

Making Sense of Emotions Through Humor and Art

Humor and art offer a unique lens to process grief, joy, and vulnerability. Mahdavian describes revisiting memories of his grandmother through a simple focus on “her hands,” which served as a visual anchor in his comic tribute. By narrowing complex relationships down to a singular motif, he navigates personal sorrow without overwhelming the reader.

Similarly, Baxter acknowledges that creating a visual tool for pain and nausea helped patients engage with their feelings rather than avoid them. She explains how her research into facial muscle cues—such as a wrinkled brow or a trembling lip—ties back to cartooning’s distillation of emotion. Artful simplicity in expression can open doors to therapeutic insights, enabling both creators and observers to gain a measure of healing through shared understanding.

Healing Through the Lens of Different Cultures

Pain—and our methods of expressing it—varies widely across cultural contexts. Baxter highlights that some cultures encourage overt emotional release, while others prize stoicism. In her work with international pediatric patients, she found that a face-based scale like BARF transcends language barriers, providing a universal vocabulary for discomfort.

Mahdavian discusses the evolutionary phenomenon of pareidolia: our intrinsic tendency to see faces in inanimate objects. This innate ability to recognize emotional cues from minimal visual information allows cartoons to communicate across diverse backgrounds. When a single curved line upturns into a smile in one culture, it evokes empathy the world over, illustrating how visual art becomes a bridge to collective healing.

Bridging Disciplines: A Common Thread in Creative Endeavors

Despite working in seemingly disparate fields, Mahdavian and Baxter identify parallel fears and breakthroughs. Each has faced concerns about credibility—Mahdavian worries that his whimsical cartoons might be dismissed as trivial art, while Baxter has encountered skepticism about using animation to measure clinical pain. “We both deal with unique mediums that can sometimes be dismissed, even when they contain significant emotional and cultural depth,” Mahdavian admits [verify].

Their dialogue reveals that innovation often emerges at the intersection of disciplines. By openly sharing methods—from Baxter’s frequency-based vibration therapy for chronic pain to Mahdavian’s craft of visual compression—both illustrate how creativity fuels healing. Their collaborative exchange serves as a blueprint for cross-sector partnerships, showing that real breakthroughs require both scientific rigor and artistic imagination.

Conclusion

The conversation between a pioneering cartoonist and a dedicated physician demonstrates that creativity is not just an artistic endeavor but a vital element of healing and communication. Through simple sketches or carefully validated scales, both artists and clinicians harness creative tools to address pain, process emotion, and foster empathy.
Key Takeaway: Embrace your own creative process as a pathway to healing by experimenting with visual expression, whether through art, humor, or storytelling.

How do you express your emotions? What role does creativity play in your journey of healing?