By P Abigail Sadhana Rao
“Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.” Pablo Picasso
Our lives have become a whirlwind of conflict, saturation, and despairing lifestyles. Inequalities and injustices keep us perturbed even in our sleep, and with the extending hand of the coronavirus pandemic taking the lives of so many people, our world hasn’t been more chaotic than it is today.
While we invest the majority of our time in building better lives, we seldom invest in ourselves. In a fast-paced world, very few people deal with stress, loneliness, or self-doubt. Pursuing art has numerous psychological benefits, the most notable of which is that it adds meaningful value to our lives by elevating our mental well-being.
Taking a day off to visit an art gallery or browsing through a digital art collection can help alleviate your anxiety. Furthermore, you could indulge yourself in a painting class or pottery class, which will not only improve your health but also increase the quality of your life.
Homes are supposed to be a safe haven from the frenetic hubbubs of everyday life. Bare walls and dimly lit spaces that are painted in bleak shades can often have the opposite effect on our psyche, further causing more stress. You may even be oblivious to these subtle effects your walls have on how you feel. Hence, investing in wall art becomes imperative to ensure you come back to spaces that are conducive and help in keeping your anxiety, stress, and depression at bay.
Art Enhances Your Ability To Focus
Our minds are fine-tuned to crave visual diversity and being surrounded by art can add a level of visual stimulation and will help you focus more effectively overall. When your walls are painted with solid colours and without any artwork around to stimulate your brain, you begin to lose focus and your mind meanders about in limbo.
According to a recent study, works of art can give as much joy as being head over heels in love. They found a correlation between the viewer’s liking of the painting and brain activity in that part of the brain that accounts for pleasure. Clearly, even science is in agreement with the fact that our brains are invigoratingly stimulated by art. By neglecting to choose art, we allow bare walls to impede our minds from being stimulated and focused. Incidentally, we are likely to hinder pathways of creativity and thinking rationally. This may further lead to attention problems, which can inevitably frustrate and stress us out.
Fights Off Anxiety and Feelings of Depression
It is human to fall on the spectrum of having either anxiety or depression or any other mental ailments that affect our functionality. Stressors of life have seemingly increased in recent years, besides being tech-savvy, we have become slaves to the widely used “black mirrors” which are ubiquitous. Our dependency on smartphones and devices has cost us our precious sleep, and using social media has further deteriorated our mental peace further adding on stress and causing us to spiral into a bad place. Furthermore being confined in a lifeless room without much colour can only make us feel more alone and rub off a grim outlook on the world around us.
While it is impossible to wean off of technological devices that plague our lives, you can indefinitely control some aspects of your life to mitigate these negative emotions. It is evident that art has the power to stimulate and impact your intellectual processes. It also has the power to transform your mind by confronting preexisting beliefs you hold, challenging you to engage more openly with your emotions, and lifting your spirits by bringing life and colour into your lives. Moreover, you can also be mindful of the amount of time you spend on your screen, thereby setting boundaries and making sure you take timely breaks and gaze at magnificent artworks that surround you.
Create Spaces That Foster Positivity
Fine art has considerably more advantages than only improving the aesthetics of your home; it also has a positive psychological effect. Humans want a visually stimulating environment to return to; we cannot exist with bare, grey, or plain white walls; this causes the brain to go stir-crazy. You need to be comfortable in your safe space and creating one that relays positivity is critical to maintaining a positive mental attitude.
Take some time to inspect your home, and find areas where there’s a lack of colour or visual flair. Identify what each room means to you, and how you would like to feel in that space. Keep these locations in mind for later when considering fine art additions.
If you are still in a quandary, our art advisory team at Mojarto will aid you to pick and choose artworks that are soothing and suitable for your space. Fostering a space that allows for increased focus, and ideas to flourish will ensure your ability to think and make choices with a clear head.