Did you know that Vincent van Gogh created "Starry Night" while hospitalized at a mental institution?
These are difficult times that sometimes make us want to get back in bed and pull the covers up over our heads. Now, like during COVID and 9/11 makes many of us ask the question "What's the point in making art when the world is turned upside down?"
Creating art is not only a distraction and hobby but is also a way to process, understand and transcend difficult experiences.
Recent studies show that making art creates new neural pathways. It re-wires our brains. Neuroscientists describe creating as a "bottom up" approach to healing and engaging sensory, motor and emotional systems. It helps with problem solving, pattern recognition and emotional regulation. (In other words it helps to make me less cranky.)
Picasso created "Guernica" in 1937 as an anti-war statement in response to the bombing of the Basque Country town in northern Spain by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
The research is clear, art-making during difficult times...
• reduces stress hormones
• helps with emotional processing
• creates shared understanding
• often breaks social isolation
• takes internalized chaos and externalizes it into something tangible
• interrupts cycles of worry and anxiety
• transforms feelings of being a victim into being active in ones own healing and growth.
Frida Kahlo created the Two Fridas painting in 1939, shortly after her divorce from Diego Rivera. It shows the two sides of her personality. One is her broken hearted self in a traditional Tehuana costume. The other Frida represents her modern, independent self.
So why are you just sitting there? Get up and go create something. I am working on a new piece about the Explorer Archetype. It's keeping me from watching the news and hopefully is re-wiring those new pathways.