How does one draw an invisible illness? My piece, "Depression," is an attempt to answer that question. It is not a portrait of a person, but a map of the disease itself—the architecture of a mind turning against its host.

The figure is shown in profile to serve as a clinical cross-section of this process. The obsessive pen work is a deliberate choice, meant to mirror the inescapable, ruminating nature of depressive thought. The body is rendered not as flesh, but as a cage-like framework, a visualization of a person being hollowed out.

The decay is centered in the cranium, representing the illness as a cancer of the psyche. This is the engine of the affliction, creating the cognitive voids—the stolen memories and intrusive thoughts—that define the internal experience.

This internal corrosion is never contained; it radiates outward. It taints one's perception of the world, representing the strained relationships, the withered ambitions, and the silent contagion that leads to isolation.

The background color introduces a crucial ambiguity. Yellow is the color of hope, but here it is a jaundiced, distant light—a memory of warmth that no longer reaches the skin. The artwork visualizes a struggle where the illness actively corrupts even this faint possibility of light, showing the tension between the world as it is and the world as it is perceived through depression.

Ultimately, "Depression" is an attempt to make an internal state visible. It is for anyone who has struggled to articulate this feeling, and for those who have sought to understand it from the outside.