Between Being and Ending: The Existential Significance of Art in a Finite Life

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I'm taking on with the PhD work I'll soon be embarking on. I've been trying to build ideas around what I'm preoccupied with and the best ways to articulate it. Titles and the ideas that come from them seem to help me a lot. Here's a short one I just completed.

This title really captures something essential about my inquiry. What does it mean to create while knowing we will die? Why do I pick up a brush, knowing both I and the painting will eventually disappear?

The phrase "Between Being and Ending" places my artistic practice in that strange, tense space between existence and nonexistence. As an artist, I live in this in-between consciously—I'm painfully aware of my temporary nature while simultaneously working against it. This "betweenness" isn't just some abstract concept but something I feel physically in my studio, in my body, in those moments when creation happens. I want my research to dig into this lived experience of making art while death-aware.

I'm drawn to existentialism because thinkers like Heidegger talked about "being-toward-death" as the most authentic way to exist, and Camus somehow found meaning despite the absurdity of it all. I think art-making isn't just a psychological defense against death anxiety (though Ernest Becker would say it is) but a fundamental way of building meaning in an existence that doesn't come with meaning built-in.

What fascinates me is whether we artists face mortality differently. Does the act of creation offer us a particular kind of existential authenticity that might not be as available to non-artists? Looking at how artists throughout history have positioned themselves in this tension between being and ending—from memento mori paintings to Rothko's void-like color fields—there seems to be something unique happening.

“My purpose is to use art as a mirror—confronting mortality, memory, and denial—to reveal what we’d rather not see and to ask what we might create from that truth.

I see my calling as this: to bring death back into the room—not for shock, but for clarity. Through art, writing, and dialogue, I work to transform death anxiety into something conscious, creative, and potentially redemptive.”

— Quinn Jacobson

Of course, my own artistic practice becomes a case study in all this. How does my awareness that I'll die shape what and how I create? How does my art simultaneously confront and transcend my mortality? The personal and the philosophical are completely intertwined here.

Beyond just me and my studio, I'm curious about how art functions culturally as a response to mortality. Through Becker's lens, art becomes a significant "immortality project"—a culturally validated way of symbolically extending beyond our biological limits. Art isn't just personal expression but a culturally embedded practice with existential significance.

This framework feels right for combining phenomenological investigation (the lived experience of creating under mortality's shadow), cultural analysis (how art functions as immortality project), and autobiographical reflection (my own artistic practice as case study).

I think this title captures the philosophical depth I'm seeking while remaining accessible and evocative. It acknowledges both the universal human condition of mortality and the particular way artists engage with this condition through their work. It positions my research at the intersection of existential philosophy, terror management theory, and artistic practice—precisely where I believe the most interesting insights will emerge.

Now to begin the actual work of existing between being and ending...

Confronting the Void

I’m considering what the title of my doctoral dissertation might be.

The school calls it a “vision-seed.” It’s an interesting way to put it. It makes sense. They say:

“Growing Your Vision-Seed
In our new transdisciplinary applied doctoral program, the PhD in Visionary Practice & Regenerative Leadership, each student begins their journey with the spark of an idea or a desire, a personal calling. We call this initial spark the vision-seed. Our program is designed to help students nurture, incubate, develop, and bring to fruition this life-giving spark as they fulfill their unique purpose.”

There’s no doubt it will change over time. I’m going into this doctoral program with a confident plan. The ideas may shift a bit as I work my way through, but the main thesis will remain in tact to the end.

My dissertation title is "Confronting the Void: An Examination of Death Anxiety, Death Denial, and Terror Management Theory Through Artistic and Cultural Lenses.” This may change, and it might not. Everything is fluid at this point.

The main point of the work will be working through the theories as they apply to creative people. I’m using myself as the subject, and possibly others as I move through the program; I’m not sure. The dissertation will deal with the intersection of mortality and art—how does a creative person process their mortality? Is it different from a non-creative person?

For the past couple of years, I’ve been writing an autobiography (the best way to describe it) to examine my own journey and how I came to art through my life experiences. I’ve blended that writing with these theories and my artwork. I feel like it will be a powerful narrative in the end. Describing how creative people deal with the knowledge of their death.

Ernest Becker said: “Man is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.” (Denial of Death)

To be forgotten and not matter (impermanence and insignificance) is unbearable psychologically speaking. We don’t want to be a nameless, faceless, forgotten being. We long for recognition. We long to be noticed and admired. We long for immortality, literal or symbolic.

Why do we get up every day? What drives us? What is the essence of human nature? Culture offers a range of possibilities for heroism or immortality projects, in which death is denied and an illusion of immortality constructed. These illusions buffer death anxiety, making it possible to function day-to-day.

Most people fail to recognize their condition. Their illusions ensnare them so deeply that they fail to recognize reality and the weight of consciousness. This is how evolutionary psychology describes the defense mechanisms against the knowledge of death. The coping mechanisms work for most people—look at the world around you— look at how people spend their time doing trivial, meaningless stuff. It’s all a distraction from confronting the void or coming to terms with death.

“Becker Faces: Subconjunctival Hemorrhage,” watercolor on paper. Sometimes, the panic and anxiety are palpable in people. I’ve been exploring painting these “Becker Faces” with watercolor. There are a few I like. Watercolor gives a certain freedom, and the way it blends and separates at the same time is beautiful.