Carmen Aldunate is a Chilean visual artist devoted for more than forty years to painting, drawing and engraving. Despite having neither an ordinary education nor a university degree, she has had a fruitful artistic life, receiving national and international recognition. In 2004 she became the first woman visual artist to be made a member of the Chilean Academy of Fine Arts. This study examines the main features of Aldunate's psycho-pathobiography, showing the influence of her family background, life history and mood disorder on her artistic work. The manner Aldunate creates art, using refinement and purity of style, remarkably parallels the way she approaches life: having to fight permanently with extreme mood states that threaten her, she resorts to self control, obsessive artistic work and search for beauty. While for Aldunate creative expression is an end in itself determining her way of living, it also becomes a medium to preserve or restore her health.