The Existential Artist
Reflections on Death, Art, and Creativity

Why This Zine Exists

The Existential Artist is not a manual, not a solution, and certainly not a therapy session. It’s a space for reflection—a place where death, art, and creativity are allowed to collide without apology.

I made this because I needed it. I’ve spent years confronting the question that haunts every artist who’s paying attention: what does it mean to create while knowing you’re going to die? This isn’t a metaphor. It’s not about making "legacy" or "meaningful work" in some self-help sense. It’s about the raw material of human existence—finitude, anxiety, transcendence—and how that material gets shaped into images, gestures, stories, and silence.

Each issue will explore these themes from a different angle—through writing, artwork, fragments of theory, quotes, and lived experience. Some entries will be sharp. Others will wander. That’s the point.

This is for the artists who feel too much, think too hard, and still choose to make something anyway.

Welcome. Let’s make meaning while we still can.

—Quinn Jacobson

On Death Anxiety and the Artist’s Burden

The existential role of the creative mind

Ernest Becker once wrote that “the artist reveals the possibility of victory over human limitation.” But that possibility is always hard-won—and temporary. The artist doesn’t conquer death. The artist confronts it, wrestles with it, reshapes it into something visible. That’s the work. That’s the burden.

In The Denial of Death, Becker outlines what he calls “the artist’s dilemma.” Unlike most people, who buffer death anxiety with cultural roles and collective illusions—religion, nationalism, consumerism—the artist often sees through those veneers. That clarity is a curse. But it’s also a kind of power. When the veil is thin, you can choose to create something instead of hide. Not everyone gets that chance. Fewer still have the courage.

Peter Wessel Zapffe called this sublimation: the rare ability to transform existential despair into cultural expression. Most people repress or distract. The artist integrates. That’s the difference.

But make no mistake: this isn’t a romantic role. It’s lonely. Neurotic. Sometimes maddening. To live close to the truth of death and still choose to make something? That’s not a career choice. That’s a spiritual rebellion.

The world doesn’t often reward that kind of rebellion. It doesn’t want reminders of its impermanence. It prefers comfort. But comfort doesn’t create. Discomfort does. Grief does. Awareness does.

If you feel the weight, you’re not broken. You’re awake. And that burden—the one that won’t let you sleep? That might be the beginning of your most honest work.