<p>This qualitative study examines how visual artists experience the psychological processes underlying artistic creation, with a focus on affect regulation, motivation, and identity. Drawing on Freud’s dual-instinct model of Eros and Thanatos, the study investigates how artists transform conflicting emotional states into visual artworks. Fifteen practising artists from Manipur, India (aged 21–40 years; painting, sculpture, and printmaking) participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using constructivist grounded theory. Three interrelated themes emerged: (a) sublimation as affective transformation, in which intense emotions such as anger, grief, and longing were channelled into colour, form, and symbolism; (b) creating in the face of adversity, where financial hardship, bereavement, and social instability intensified creative drive rather than inhibiting it; and (c) art as self-healing and identity-making, through which participants described art-making as fostering coherence, agency, and cultural belonging. The findings extend empirical aesthetics and creativity research by highlighting how artistic production functions as an affect-regulation strategy and a mechanism of identity reconstruction in a non-Western cultural context. Implications are discussed for models of aesthetic emotions, post-adversity growth, and culturally sensitive art-based interventions.</p>