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Are you a person who enjoys museums? What kind of museum-goer are you? Do you get reluctantly dragged along, not particularly seeing the point of looking at a bunch of papers on the wall? Perhaps you enter the spaces enthusiastically grabbing your map to plot your art route. I don't know you and your life, yet... (sign up for my email list so we can get to know each other ;) but I can tell you some facts and research that builds my own knowledge and perspective of art. Maybe you'll add them to your own perspective, let's find out together.
Art has been a part of humanity since we started growing up. For a bit of a zoom-out in history, about 45,500 years ago, someone drew a wild boar in a cave on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Tools have been discovered from around this same time, leading experts to believe man was also working on his deep sea fishing skills in other regions of the world at this time. In an article for the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, author and philosopher Noel Carroll ponders the relationship between art and human nature. His underlying sentiment is one I and, likely, cave painters strongly agree with; art is an intrinsic part of human nature. Since that first painting, art has evolved and grown alongside humans, going through different eras, styles, and periods. Art has been a reflection of what was captivating humanity at the time. Whether it was the natural world that nurtured us that we aim to better understand, to communicate with other communities and groups, or to capture the aristocratic nobility who symbolized the height of society at the time. As humans, we gain inspiration from the lives we live to capture a moment in time from our perspectives for sharing and experiencing later.
Color Me Inspired!
There are lots of different ways to experience art. Through viewing, creating, and partaking, whatever you choose to do, art will benefit you in some way. Humans have been artists all the way back since the first boar portrait and there are benefits to be had for all art lovers who experience it in the vast ways art exists. Last post, I gave you a closer look at creativity, and this time, I'll elaborate on the important role art plays in not only our creative process but the entirety of our wellbeings. While there is an underwhelming amount of research into art and creativity from the psychology world, one researcher summed up some of the known positive impacts art has on our creativity. What was your major in college, if you went? According to one research study examined in this article, art majors are frequently more inspired than other different majors. Thinking about this further, we can fairly assume art students have more exposure to traditionally inspiring things. Perhaps we should start decorating economics classrooms with Piacasos and mathematics rooms with Van Gogh's. Will this lead to the unexpected growth of minds?
One of my recent reads, Amy E. Herman's book Visual Intelligence uses gorgeous art visuals throughout the pages to deepen our perceptions and strengthen our minds in different contexts. These mental and visual exercises sprinkled effortlessly throughout the book demonstrate perfectly the way we can use art to further benefit our own realities and experiences through our grounded surrounding processing. She makes you think about how that sculpture you pass every day on your normal route makes you feel and why it might have been put there in the first place. Being prompted to reexamine your world through the lens of an art viewer has a way of brightening the colors around you. You may find yourself feeling more grounded and mindful of yourself in the moments that make up your days. Art has the effect of turning introspection inwards for the partakers, allowing for a myriad of benefits. As a part of this process, art can lower your cortisol and stress levels, decrease your heart rate and increase dopamine levels. And those are just short-term benefits.
For senior citizens that engage in art therapy groups, this practice may help stabilize neuronal erosion, counteract some of the effects of Alzheimer's and dementia, and bring a feeling of accomplishment and control at a time when it is extra needed. In addition to benefitting you when you're older, being an active art lover can benefit you even earlier on by slowing some of the natural mental deterioration that comes with aging. Art transcends language and verbal communication by using color, subject matter, shapes, and other aspects to invoke emotions and messages to viewers. The subjectiveness and effectiveness of art make it the perfect tool for expression without the need for words or too much forethought.
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” - Georgia O’Keeffe
What's the real psychology of art?
Our brains are complex structures that have systems and functions we don't fully understand yet. However, thanks to modern brain imaging, we are able to roughly track brain activation, allowing us to start to piece together parts of the brainy puzzle. When presented with classic sculptures and prompted to view them as though at a museum, researchers saw higher levels of activation in the right insula (a part of our brain that is heavily involved in our consciousness, i.e. emotions, homeostasis, motor skills, etc.), and lower activation levels in the lateral occipital gyrus, precuneus, and prefrontal areas. In another study, damage to the right insular area has been posited as a reason behind the loss of the ability to process tactile touches which may further support the idea that art is an emotional and full-body experience.
In the above-mentioned sculpture study, sculptures that were viewed as "beautiful" when participants were asked to rate aestheticism activated the right amygdala. The amygdala is a part of your brain that has a large hand in the world of your emotions. The right side of the amygdala has been shown to deal more with negative emotion than the left side, though both sides work in synchronicity despite having two separate memory systems. Other things that the amygdala plays a role in include facial processing, emotional memory and decoding, and awareness control. The overall activation of the amygdala areas lets us know that art hits us on an emotional level, causing varying reactions all over.
Art also stimulates activity in the reward centers of the brain that then induce the production of feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. When looking at art, the rushes of chemicals and neurotransmitters that hit us cause us to feel like we do when looking at a loved one. These neurological reactions within our minds allow the brain to restructure and strengthen neural pathways that are connected to these feelings and thoughts. Neural pathways are often described as the information highways that neurons use to travel throughout our brains with their vital information and functions. Neurons travel from all over your body with important information like sensory experiences, conscious stimuli processing, unconscious tasks and systems, and all that good stuff. They're the reason you start thinking about ice cream as soon as someone mentions dessert and why you get that one song stuck in your head anytime someone says that one phrase around you. Neural pathways can be influenced by us by simply being aware of them, which is what art does in a way. It brings your conscious awareness into a focal point that triggers you to think about things, and prompts your brain to experience new things, thus creating even more pathways or widening the ones you already have. Long story short, art actively expands your consciousness.
One of my favorite ways to connect with my artistic side is coloring. It's the perfect mindless art form, especially when you let go of the notion of coloring inside the lines. It's ok to let yourself get a little messy :) This whimsical coloring book is my current go-to from one of my favorite coloring book authors ever. Coloring books can help calm your brain, improve your fine motor skills, and induce a meditative state. For those wanting to deepen their creativity and art, check out my FREE Deep Creativity Prompts I created for just that purpose! Use them however you please and share your results on Instagram @angelina.all.over. I can't wait to see what you create!
Arts benefits range from inducing an altered state of consciousness (like meditation or hypnotherapy.) Stay tuned in for more on those! To more physical things, like lowering blood pressure and cortisol levels. I think art has been proven more than beneficial. Have you learned something today? Do you feel as though your neural pathways have been expanded? If you have, leave a comment below and tell me what you learned! After all of this, hopefully, you are encouraged to go visit your nearest museum or dust off those old paintbrushes. Don't be afraid to branch out even more and take up things like decorative cake baking, purposefully fun debates spurred by random cards picked, or trying out my writing prompts linked above. Stay artsy and see you All Over!
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