Why Art Feels Good

Many of us who make art are familiar with the satisfaction and fulfillment art can bring, and how it supports our well-being. Art therapy theory and practice can help us understand how.

Self-Expression

Art can be a powerful way to communicate our personal experience, and it can help us to do so in a more holistic sense because we’re not just using verbal and written language. Art is a way for us to access and express complex and difficult life experiences, and it may even help us avoid over-analyzing or talking around our feelings.

This is why art therapists believe that art making is for anyone, and value all art expression. We know that expressing our feelings, rather than suppressing them, is healthy—and that art helps us do that within a culture that often encourages the opposite. Even when we make art about things that are difficult, the process of making it can feel comforting.

Meaning-Making

In addition to helping us express our experience, art can help us make sense of it. It’s rare that we feel only one way about something! The way art can hold multiple meanings—sometimes even conflicting ones—can help us integrate and synthesize complex feelings and experiences. Images can be rich with symbolism and metaphor and visual art can be a powerful way for us to make meaning of our experiences.

Externalizing and Containing

Art is also uniquely powerful in the way it can help us to both externalize and contain our experience and feelings.

Using art to externalize what we’re feeling can be a safe, healthy way to deal with painful thoughts or strong emotions, or to channel stress or pain into action. This catharsis can bring us relief. Simultaneously, the process of making art—as well as the art itself— can act as a container to safely hold our thoughts and feelings. We can then gain comfort from holding a difficult issue within the boundaries of what we create or the time we take to make it. In this way, art can be a way to feel held, as well as to safely express vulnerable feelings. The surge in popularity of creative activities during the height of the COVID pandemic is a good example of how making art can comfort us in difficult times.

Play/Problem Solving 

Art also fosters well-being through play. When we’re children, creativity comes to us instinctively, and we’re often encouraged to explore it. However, as we age, we begin to demand expertise of ourselves, and we might feel discouraged if we don’t have natural technical skill. We move away from pure play and can lose touch with the transformational potential of our own creative process. Making art can counter this: it helps us become more flexible, see things from new perspectives, and tap into creative problem-solving and intuition. And making art can be fun! It can help us to feel engaged in our lives and can be a source of joy.

Self-Transcendence

Engaging in creative practices can rejuvenate us, improving our mood and energizing us in ways that persist beyond the time we’re actively making art. And art can even be a way to access our own spirituality, or to give us a sense of connecting to something greater than ourselves.

Sensory Experience

One of the most valuable elements of art making is the sensory experience it provides. The art process can be self-soothing and can create a relaxation response. This can help us to regulate our emotions—for example, research shows that making art can lower our cortisol levels, which helps us manage stress, and can even help to reduce physical pain.

The multi-sensory experience of artmaking allows us to tap into emotions and perceptions more easily than with words alone. This somatic (body) awareness helps us to understand ourselves, and the world around us, in a more holistic way.

Community Artmaking 

Making art can even be a social activity that builds community, and has been found to increase social connection and cohesion. Culturally-resonant art practices, from quilting bees to mural projects, provide opportunities for intergenerational engagement and belonging. There’s even a growing body of research that supports social prescribing—when arts, cultural, and social activities are prescribed by care providers—and shows positive health and well-being outcomes.

Art as Social Action

As an extension to how art-making benefits community well-being, we can look at how art has been used as a form of social action throughout history. Artists create awareness of social injustice and have historically served as agents for social change and as historians, recording what is happening. Black feminist writer, educator, and activist Toni Cade Bambara reminds us that “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” The arts can be a powerful catalyst for people to challenge oppressive systems and can form a connection between individual and community healing and social change.

These examples are only scratching the surface of how art can support individual and community health. Are you interested in incorporating art into your therapy or your organization’s wellness programming? I have over 15 years of experience working with individuals and groups in private and community settings—let’s talk.