A growing body of research shows that engaging with the arts is good for our brains. Activities such as playing an instrument, drawing a picture, or dancing a rumba release serotonin and endorphins that foster a sense of well-being and create new neural connections. They increase blood flow to the medial prefrontal cortex, the reward center of our brain, and lower stress by reducing cortisol levels. And here’s an encouraging research finding: you get the health benefits of the arts no matter how good you are at them.
“Arts and aesthetics can quite literally rewire your brain,” write Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross in Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. “They are a secret sauce that helps build new synaptic connections.”
The arts work their magic in communities, too. By bringing people together in communal spaces such as galleries, festivals, community orchestras and theaters, they strengthen social bonds. They bridge economic and social divides, foster mutual respect, and help us better understand each other. And by giving us pride in our local areas, they bring economic benefits as well, because vibrant artistic communities attract visitors, create jobs, and spur revitalization efforts.
While these are all wonderful arguments for cultivating and supporting the arts, here’s my personal reason: they’ve profoundly enriched my life.
In the spring of 2020, during the first anxiety-filled months of the pandemic, I took an online watercolor class. I’d never done anything with the visual arts, other than a couple of classes in high school, where I was an indifferent student at best. But desperate for something to do in lock-down, I signed up for a course with Australian artist Liz Steel. I enjoyed it, then took another online art class, and another, and also discovered the wealth of free instruction on YouTube. I filled a growing set of sketching journals, each one a potpourri of the awkward and badly proportioned. But I got a little bit better, slowly, and no matter how amateurish my efforts, they were mine. No one had ever created, or would create, quite what I was doing.
Today I enthusiastically embrace the title of “amateur,” which comes from the Latin amatore, meaning “a lover.” As in, I’m a lover of creating art. I’ve also changed my definition of what it means to be good at art: I count a day as an artistic success if I’ve created something. It doesn’t have to be for long or be technically skilled. It just needs to be done, whether it’s a sketch of a window, a few details added to a painting from the day before, or five minutes of drawing in between errands as I sit in the car. This isn’t a pathway that’s going to lead me to being exhibited in a museum, but at the end of my life I hope to have a stack of sketchbooks.
My experiences have made me become an evangelist for art. Here’s my main message: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE GOOD AT ART TO BE AN ARTIST. Sorry for the caps. It’s just that I’m very enthusiastic about this. Think of all the other identities that you claim without much evidence. You can say you’re a gardener even if all you have are a few tomato plants on your patio. You can be a bridge player even if you hardly ever win, or a fisherman if you never catch anything. But something about art makes us more hesitant. You have to have talent, you have to take classes, your work has to appeal to people, you have to get paid.
But part of what I’ve discovered is the simple fact that if you create art, you are an artist. If you keep at it, there’s a good chance you’ll get better. And most of all, making art feeds something deep in our souls.
Last September I experienced the power of art for both individuals and the larger community at Finster Fest in Summerville, Georgia. The annual event is held at Paradise Garden, an immersive art environment created by Howard Finster, who was one of the first people to gain a national reputation for what’s sometimes called Outsider Art (meaning art created by self-taught artists working outside of the mainstream art world). Despite having never taken an art class, Finster created more than 40,000 eclectic works. His magnum opus is Paradise Garden, a 2.5-acre hodgepodge of sculptures, paintings, murals, and ramshackle buildings connected by mosaic pathways.
The festival named after him celebrates his legacy and promotes outsider and folk art in general. As I wandered amid the booths where more than 70 artists sold their creations, I was struck by how cheerful it all was. The art was a kaleidoscope of vivid colors, and the hum of conversations was interwoven with the sounds of a bluegrass band.
“I don’t do this for the money,” said Justin Thomas Atkin, who was selling both paintings and his own brand of corn grits. “I just sort of got to get it out. After I started painting, people told me my work reminded them of Howard Finster’s. It tells stories, and I’m self-taught, just like he was. If you can’t draw and can’t paint, people call you a folk artist. That’s what I am.”
In other words, even if you can’t aspire to be a Michelangelo, you can still try to be a Howard Finster or a Justin Thomas Atkin.
All of this is an argument for getting out of your comfort zone. Especially as we grow older, we often don’t want to try anything new because we’re not already good at it. You don’t want to look ridiculous when you’re learning ballroom dancing. You’re afraid to take up an instrument because you know it’s going to sound awful. You can’t join a theater group because they’ll feel sorry for how awkward you are on stage.
So let me encourage you to overcome those feelings and pick up that paint brush, sign up for that audition, or join that choir. In doing so, you’ll not only enhance your mental and physical well-being, but also help foster a stronger sense of community with other people.
I love these words from Jesuit priest and author Anthony de Mello: “You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love.”
Lori Erickson writes about the intersection of travel and spirituality in books that include Every Step Is Home, The Soul of the Family Tree, and Holy Rover. Paintings and drawings by Lori Erickson.
