How art improves mental health.
Art has always been a passion of mine. Art has the potential to reduce stress by lowering blood levels of cortisol, the body’s stress hormone. Reducing symptoms of mental illness, art therapy helps alleviate anxiety, depression, and general psychological discomfort. Art also increases self-esteem, as it has the potential to enhance emotional resilience, and self-awareness which is the key to emotional regulation. Art has been known to enhance cognitive performance and has a great effect on social skills. Taking part in artistic endeavors can also help to alleviate feelings of isolation and loneliness. Art also has the potential to enhance older individuals’ memory and reasoning. Art stimulates our senses, emotions, and intellect.
I am not much of an artist myself, although I would love to start trying my hand at abstract painting, but I am an aesthete, and viewing works of art brings a sort of calm of me that helps me forget anything pressing that I may have going on in the back of my mind. No matter how stressful the week has been, art helps me tame the world and brings about quiet and still. Back in October, I had the pleasure of finally making it out to the new exhibit at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. A new exhibition: Clare Rojas: Past the Present opened in September and I had been meaning to make my way out to view it. Viewing the artists work gave me a variety of positive emotions, even works that one would find mysterious and haunting such as the painting above where one being seems to be at alliance with a mysterious figure in another realm.
The best thing about art is that we are free to interpret our own meanings of each piece, based on the emotions that the pieces invoke within us. When I saw the painting above, it immediately became one of my favorites. Instead of seeing the painting as scary and dark, I saw confirmation of the fact that we need to learn to release anxiety over the things that we cannot control. Typically, we view being out of control of any circumstance as a dark place/entity/state of mind. When we make friends with things outside of our control (the darkness), we make peace with the unknown. We find acceptance and we find space to grow into the things that we actually can control. When I look at art, I try to find meanings and messages that I can take with me into the world.
Art imitates real life, when you look deeply enough into it, you may find that the canvas is speaking loudly to your heart or perhaps your soul. In another piece, Color fell like rain, Clare Rojas creates a very interesting scene that shows an unusual figure, that has entered a room, seemingly just to tug on the strings of the bird above, which is bending to the controllers lullaby. I immediately thought about times where I have allowed others to interrupt areas of my life, crossing my boundaries as a result, chaos on some level ensued. There were times where I allowed myself to be lulled in a position of being control by a person outside of my own self. And it was not a fun time in my life. through those experiences, I learned resilience. I learned the art of saying no.
Art has made a huge impact on not only how I see/view the world but also how I view myself in terms of progress and personal growth. I tend to find a story within the paintings and use it to encourage me to keep growing in my personal endeavors. It induces a sort of refreshing joy-of-culture and an immense appreciation for creativity. Art is something that is both relative in its meanings, and solid in its intentions.
Self Cultivation 