Fighting depression and anxiety, Daytona man's passion for pointillism brings him purpose

DAYTONA BEACH — From a very early age, John Darovitz knew his life’s passion was art — a passion that blossomed even more when he discovered the pointillist technique.

Darovitz has spent years building his career as an artist, but a clinical depression and anxiety diagnosis later in life changed his relationship to his work — one that has been often times more challenging, while also proving an opportunity for him to find a more significant purpose in life.

A Daytona Beach resident for just over a year, Darovitz’s hope is that his art will not only gain the attention of exhibitors, but also raise awareness to what he sees as the “needed” attention to mental health services in the U.S.

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May is Mental Health Awareness Month, "established in 1949 to increase awareness of the importance of mental health and wellness in Americans’ lives and to celebrate recovery from mental illness," according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

According to Mental Health America, 19.86% of adults in the United States suffer from some form of mental illness — that is equivalent to around 50 million people.

Creating art with pins

Born and raised in the Detroit metro area, Darovitz was bitten by the art bug when he was just a kid in grade school.

For all his life, “art has been my passion,” he said in a recent interview.

It was also then that he came across pointillism — a painting technique that uses different colored dots in patterns to compose an image.

One of the paintings he fell in love with, Georges Pierre Seurat’s iconic “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” from 1886, inspired him to follow that artistic style.

But there are no paint brushes surrounding Darovitz’s canvases in his home studio.

“I wanted to figure out how could I do something really cool using something different,” Darovitz said. “With my emotional states, pins became just a very easy, calming, soft way to create.”

Since starting pin art in 2018, Darovitz has completed a 20-piece series called “Influencers,” which consists of 20 portraits of well-known celebrities — singers, actors and athletes, such as Taylor Swift, Kobe Bryant, Mark Wahlberg and more.

All of the subjects, Darovitz said, have personally dealt with or work to raise awareness of mental health issues.

“I wanted to be as broad as I could. I didn’t want to select just actors or just specifically singers, but people who were influential … who were also advocates for it,” Darovitz said. “Kobe Bryant didn’t suffer from mental health himself, but he was a very strong advocate.”

Bryant was part of a 2018 campaign by Los Angeles County called “WE RISE” — a project “that supports health and healing across Los Angeles County by investing in local organizations, artists and leaders to strengthen community well-being,” according to its website.

Others featured in Darovitz’s series include Pink, Amy Winehouse, Sylvester Stallone, Robert DeNiro and others.

Darovitz next series, "Coastal Life," is in progress and features pin art work of local landscapes, animal life and more.

‘Simplifying’ his process

But Darovitz’s first go at pointillism wasn’t with pins, but with screws — something that ultimately didn’t work for him.

“I didn’t want to paint them, I wanted to find the natural color of screws, and these were the only colors I could find,” Darovitz said as he pointed to two of his works, both of which portray Snoopy, of “Peanuts” fame, with black, gray, white and some bronze screws.

“But doing these — I love them, they’re fantastic — but they have a little industrial feel to me,” Darovitz said. “And they’re very heavy. This one has 10,000 screws and took me six months to create.”

Darovitz could sense he “was onto something,” but he wasn’t completely satisfied yet with his work.

One day as he was wandering through a hobby store, “I see a bag of pins, with a whole array of colors.”

“I looked at that and an idea just came to my head, and I immediately bought it and tried to figure out how I could use them,” he said.

He decided to create his pin art works using black backdrops and using only white, blue, yellow and red pins to “simplify” the process and make the images bolder.

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“For me as an artist, I’m more comfortable knowing where I’m going,” he said. “And I think that’s part of, because of the way my brain works, I guess.”

‘You don’t feel like doing anything’

But his artistic work became more than just a vocation later in his life, when in 2011 he began experiencing and was diagnosed with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

“I didn’t know what was going on, I was losing weight, I was withdrawn. I didn’t feel right,” Darovitz said.

Darovitz’s depression is called anhedonia, which is defined as “the inability to experience pleasure or enjoyment from activities that would normally be pleasurable,” according to the National Institutes of Health.

“You don’t feel like doing anything,” Darovitz said. “You want to, but you’re just trapped, and you just can’t.”

Darovitz kept his diagnosis from many in his family, with the exception of his siblings, because “we didn’t know how to handle it, we didn’t know what to say.”

“For many years I felt a lot of shame,” he said. “Because I would be out with my wife and my friends and they could tell, ‘What’s wrong with him?’”

Darovitz went to therapy, where he began to learn about his condition and began treatment.

His therapist recommended he look into his family history, and Darovitz found out that a few of his past family members also dealt with some form of mental health issues.

‘They need to feel like they are not alone’

It was also his therapist who encouraged Darovitz to get involved with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (or NAMI)

NAMI is “a nationwide, grassroots” mental health organization offering “educational programs, advocates for individuals and families affected by mental illness, and operates a toll-free helpline,” according to its website.

A member of the Michigan chapter of the organization, Darovitz also wants to get involved with the local chapter here in Volusia County.

“Not only do they support people who have mental illnesses, but they also support the family members who are also part of that,” Darovitz said. “It’s not just me that’s affected — my wife is also affected.”

Darovitz and his wife, Karin, have been married for over 30 years.

“The most important thing is just to meet them where they are at,” Karin Darovitz said. “Unless you are in their shoes, you don’t really know.”

She said awareness around mental illness is larger now than before, and people are less judgmental and more accepting of those who suffer from it.

“But then people don’t know what to do either,” she said. “Everyone that’s suffering, they just need support. They need to feel like they are not alone.”

Every day she reminds her husband that “it is not always going to be like this.”

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She said that her husband’s work is “very therapeutic for him,” giving him something “to feel productive and gives him a little bit of hope.”

While John Darovitz’s hope is that one day his work will be featured in exhibition, he also hopes that his story can help others suffering from mental illnesses.

“I’m hoping that telling my story at least will open some hearts of some gallery owners out there, and that my art could help someone else,” he said. “Because it is one thing to be appreciated for something that looks beautiful on the wall, but it is another when you’re appreciated for the reason behind it.”

Darovitz’s works are all for sale on his website, artbydarovitz.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: How pointillist art helps Daytona man cope with clinical depression