Art can help you cope with the pandemic. — Arpita Sharma
By: Arpita Sharma
Tags: Art, Creative Process, Creativity, Life

I don’t know about you all, but I’ve been struggling a lot recently — feeling more lethargic, lost, and void of meaning. As someone who still has a job, a home, and whose family is relatively healthy given everything, I feel pretty privileged (knock on wood). Even so, this pandemic has taken a major toll on my mental health and really restricted my ability to do the things that gave me joy and helped me be more resilient.

One thing that has gone right for me though is my effort to continuing to make art and trying to connect with an art community during this pandemic. At the beginning of this year, NPR shared an article called Feeling Artsy? Here’s How Making Art Helps Your Brain. I’ve been thinking about this piece a lot recently as the pandemic continues to disrupt our lives and makes it difficult to connect, explore, and expand our worlds. I wanted to share some of the key benefits of creating art from the article. Hopefully, it will encourage you to do something a little more creative in your spare time.

1) Art helps you imagine a more hopeful future.

Girija Kaimal is an Associate Professor at Drexel University and a researcher in art therapy, leading art sessions with members of the military suffering from traumatic brain injury and caregivers of cancer patients. She wrote a recent piece for the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association theorizing that art-making helps us navigate problems that might arise in the future. She argues that the act of imagination is actually an act of survival. It is preparing us to imagine possibilities and hopefully survives those possibilities.

I see this play out often with the folks who come to my art classes. They feel more hopeful and creative when they spend their evenings in a community with others creating something. The process of creation opens up their imagination to new ideas or approaches to the world.

2) Art makes you happier.

Kaimal and a team of researchers also discovered that making art may benefit people dealing with addictive behaviors, eating disorders, and mood disorders. They measured blood flow to the brain’s reward center, the medial prefrontal cortex, in 26 participants as they completed three art activities: coloring in a mandala, doodling, and drawing freely on a blank sheet of paper. They found an increase in blood flow to this part of the brain when the participants were making art. The research suggests that art may activate reward pathways in the brain that can benefit them.

I have personally experienced this in my own life. I started painting during a period where I was struggling with how to managing life expectations and disappointments. Art allowed me to feel happier and better manage those challenges.

3. No matter your skill level, creating art makes you less anxious about life.

A 2016 research paper found that 45 minutes of creating art in a studio significantly lowered stress levels. The paper also showed that there were no differences in health outcomes between people who identify as experienced artists and people who don’t. So that means that no matter your skill level, you’ll be able to feel all the good things that come with making art.

A struggle I hear from many people I try to convince to take up art is the fear and anxiety around not being good at it. One of the great things about this article is that it reinforces that you don’t have to be greatly skilled at art in order to enjoy it and reduce your stress levels.

If you read this and want to try painting, check out my other article where I share my top 5 youtube art tutorial channels. If you are interested in a community of hobby artists, come to my art class on Wednesday nights. I’d love to have you.