You Don’t Have to be an Artist to Benefit from Art
The amazing thing about art that we sometimes gloss over is that you do not have to be an artist or creative to reap the benefits that art can offer. These benefits mainly include relief of anxiety and increasing your mental health as a whole.
Elizabeth Scott, MS did a fantastic article explaining how to relieve stress with art therapy. She explained that “you can also use self-directed art to express your creative side, reduce stress, and get in touch with your feelings.”
To read more about the benefits of art therapy, click here:
verywellmind.com/art-therapy-relieve-stress-by-being-creative-3144581
On a more personal note, the way I use art is by clearing my mind.
Everyone is different with how they reduce anxiety or get into that meditative state. I struggled with meditating and trying to clear my mind with breathing and music. Instead, I would get out a piece of paper (whatever I had lying around) and just draw what I was feeling or simply how I wanted to feel.
The benefits of using colour, shape, positive, and negative space to express your inner thoughts, feelings, demons, etc. is extremely therapeutic. However, sometimes it is hard to access that creative side to me during anxious times. I imagine other people also feel this way.
Sometimes accessing our creative side by physically participating in art may seem daunting. There are many niches of art, but the one I find most therapeutic and what I am going to talk about is Modern Art.
The way I see Modern Art is that I am able to have one of two experiences: an out of body experience, or a reflective experience.
Modern Art is very therapeutic as well.
Having an out of body experience is calming because we are able to almost remove ourselves from our body spiritually and embody what the artist was feeling during that piece they did and connect to that emotion. It is extremely meditative and mind numbing in a positive way. On the other hand, we are able to have a reflective experience.
Reflective experiences are amazing because we are able to stare for hours at a piece and find a way to connect it to ourselves emotionally with how we are, how we want to be, or where we are in life.
You can see an article written by the International Studied in History and Business of Art & Culture the benefits of modern and contemporary art with the relaxation aspect and inspiration aspect here: https://www.iesa.edu/paris/news-events/contemporary-art-importance
If you ever are in the London area, a great place to go and see some amazing modern and contemporary art exhibits is at the Modern Art Gallery in London ( https://www.modernart.net/ ).
In this gallery you can see up and coming exhibits but works from amazing artists such as Paul Lee
and Katy Moran. Both extremely different and controversial artists with how they express their thoughts, which are both impactful and mesmerising to see.
It is a challenge to get to a place where you feel confident in reflecting through art, and I am in no way an expert.
However, I think just peeling back the layers of the piece itself or your piece can help evoke emotion and have that release.
Freelance Written by Alessandra Hutson
Wholesome World provides digital access to healthy lifestyle information and medical research. It is approved by the National Health Service (NHS) and features in the app library.
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