Everyone loves art. Whether it's looking at a beautiful photograph, navigating through a well-designed website, or admiring your favorite sculpture, art is entertaining and ultimately pleasing. This is why Tumblr, Facebook, and especially Instagram have countless craft sharing accounts and creators showcasing their work (like myself). While looking at art gives enjoyment, creating art has been found to actually change the way your brain works. Here's how:
1. It helps you think differently.
Essentially, creating something--anything--provides a distraction from your normal train of thought. Consider this: the average human being thinks 60,000 thoughts a day. Incredible! However, 95% of these are actually the same thoughts we rethink every single day, giving us a very monotonous brain cycle. Painting, sewing, sculpting, building, collaging or anything creative and constructive takes your mind away from these usual thoughts and focuses on the brand new task at hand.
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2. Focus is improved
through creation. When you're making art, your brain is training itself to focus on that alone. Because it's usually a task you can enjoy, you can become completely immersed with and engaged in your brushstrokes and pencil lines. This is called "flow." I always know I've reached my flow when I look up and it's been two hours, I forgot to eat and missed three phone calls even though my volume was on (whoops!). Although you might miss your lunch date on accident, your focus is improved through the mental exercise.
3. Flow simulates meditation.
Becoming ultra-focused is an extremely similar state of mind as is generated during formal meditation. The calm and steady feeling produced in the mind carries the healing qualities of meditation as a result. Meditation and meditative states have been studied intensely by scientists and discovered to have mental and physical benefits, including increased happiness, less anxiety, stronger focus, and improved immune systems. Being an artist is good for your health! Tell your parents that next time they tell you to get a real career.
4. Artists are born artists.
(to an extent). The brain is changed through making art, but studies show that artists' brains are actually different to begin with. BBC News published an article detailing scientific findings from a study published in NeuroImage that found artists' brain scans showed "increased neural matter in areas relating to fine motor movements and visual imagery" compared to the brain scans of those who were not artists. While this supports the idea of nature over nurture when it comes to talent, these are skills that can be exercised and improved as well. Neurolmage's study also debunked the idea that artists are "right brained," because the increased brain matter is spread out across many sections.
