Paintings are a great way to express thoughts and feelings that we don’t otherwise know how to verbalize. Paintings help you learn more about yourself, the world, and it even boosts your health!
Here are 15 reasons why paintings are important:
15 Benefits Of Paintings That You Might Never Have Heard Of
Below are the 15 amazing benefits of paintings to get you thinking:
1. Paintings Are An Antidepressant
There are many studies that have shown that when you look at paintings, you feel more positive emotions in the brain.
One study showed that participants who viewed works of art before bed reported better sleep quality with less fatigue the next morning than those who didn’t. This is why, therapists commonly use this method to treat their patients.
2. Paintings Increase Your Creativity
Paintings are a great way to boost your creativity because they give you different perspectives of how to view the world around us. The most creative people may see things through very different eyes compared to most other people and paintings can help express what our minds see. For example, many artists tend to do more abstract paintings, which can help them more easily convey their ideas.
3. Paintings Can Improve Your Mood
Paintings not only make you feel better and happier, they also improve your mood more long-term as well. Many studies have shown that looking at art of any kind has a positive effect on our brain and emotions. Positive emotions often lead us to be creative, energized, and determined for success!
4. Paintings Can Help You Learn More About Yourself
Paintings helps you learn more about yourself because it gives an outlet that allows you to express yourself without words or just by simply painting what you see around you every day.
We know from neuroscience research that looking at paintings can prompt your brain to create whatever story you see or whatever emotions are present in the piece. This allows you to learn more about how you feel about certain things, which helps you understand yourself better.
Related Video – The Healing Powers Of Art
5. Paintings Can Boost Your Memory
Paintings can also help boost your memory by allowing your brain to recognize all the intricate details that most people would normally not pay attention to.
For example, when we look at a painting of flowers, we immediately notice all the different colors and patterns of each flower carefully placed next to one another. This gives us the practice at looking for minute details in real life, which helps our memory recall for certain events down the road.
6. Paintings Can Help You Heal Better
Many therapists often use art therapy to help their patients heal better. Art therapy is a form of mental health care that uses different types of art as treatment. This can range from painting or drawing to sculpting, photography, and even dance!
Art therapy helps with self-expression and various other ways to treat mental illnesses such as PTSD, anxiety, stress, etc.
7. Paintings Can Reduce Your Stress Levels
A study done by the University of Auckland showed that participants who completed an art activity 40 minutes before being asked to give a speech reduced their stress levels by 25% compared to those who did not participate in any type of art activity prior.
This allows us all to see how therapeutic and relaxing paintings can be and why we should take time out of our day to visit an art museum or gallery!
8. Paintings Can Improve Your Social Life
It has been shown that the amygdala, which is a part of your brain associated with emotion and social behavior, lightens its activities when exposed to beauty such as paintings.
This allows you to feel more calm and relaxed in different social settings because it reduces any anxiety due to unfamiliar environments. This also helps us open ourselves up to others much easier by simply just enjoying their company rather than worrying about what they might think of us.
9. Paintings Can Reduce Anxiety And Fearfulness
Studies have shown that looking at images depicting human eyes makes people calmer and less anxious. For most people, the eyes are the window to the soul and help us feel a deeper connection with others.
When we see someone with dilated or enlarged pupils, it indicates that they may be interested in what you have to say or that they trust you. For this reason, paintings of eyes often helps people reduce their anxiety and fearfulness during certain social settings.
10. Paintings Can Help You Feel More Relaxed
When we visit a museum, gallery, or an exhibit full of different pieces of art from all over the world, it gives us a way to learn more about other cultures without breaking out of our comfort zone. This allows us to become more educated as well as feel more relaxed about traveling to unfamiliar places because we understand more about the people and their ways of life.
11. Paintings Can Improve Your Child’s Brain Development
Research has shown that exposing children to arts while they’re young helps their brain develop better through focus and decision making skills.
Not only does it help with their cognitive development, but according to a study done by the American Foundation for the Arts, students who participated in a fine arts program had a higher GPA compared to those who didn’t.
This shows us how painting can also improve your child’s educational development as well as make them more focused on school rather than simply just assigned tasks from their teachers.
12. Paintings Can Improve Your Recalling Abilities
Research has shown that when we look at pictures or paintings, our memory recall increases dramatically because of all the details being put into one single image.
This means that if you have memories attached to certain paintings or images, they will come rushing back in no time!
This is great for someone who may be struggling to remember certain events or people, simply because our visual senses help with memory recall more than any other sense.
13. Paintings Can Lower Blood Pressure
According to the American Art Therapy Association, looking at paintings can lower your blood pressure by calming you down and slowing down your heart rate.
This gives us all an opportunity to slow ourselves down when we’re feeling overwhelmed with different types of stress that occur on a daily basis.
For example, if you’re feeling angry about something but don’t want to release it through physical violence, simply viewing a painting of your choice could help calm you down enough so that you don’t feel like hurting anyone or anything.
14. Paintings Can Make You More Aware of Your Surroundings
One study done by the University of South Australia mentioned that viewing paintings allow us to focus on our surroundings without feeling like we’re wasting time.
This means that looking at paintings helps us be more aware of our physical environment whether it’s something happening around us or if there are certain things we may need for ourselves in terms of necessities such as food, water, shelter.
It’s also known to increase our curiosity and fascination with certain objects which can help with adventurous exploration!
15. Paintings Can Increase Feelings of Concentration
According to research done by the American Art Therapy Association, just one session of viewing art helps increase feelings of concentration.
It has also been noted that artists who are exposed to certain types of art on a regular basis have feelings of concentration at almost all times.
This gives us the opportunity to feel more focused in whatever type of environment or task we’re completing because everything around us will be less distracting which may lead to successful completion.
The Importance Of Paintings – Conclusion
From all of the research and studies that have been done, it seems as if paintings can actually help improve our lives in more ways than we think!
It brings us together as a global community, helps build stronger relationships and friendships and even though you may not notice it right away, it’s working hard to make your life easier.
References
- https://www.everydayhealth.com/hs/major-depression/creative-therapies/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804629/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5442989/
Passionate about literature, books, and weaving words into phrases, I’m pursuing an academic career in English Literature and Linguistics and have been working as a content writer since 2016. Writing, to me, is the smoothest way to explain things to others and share knowledge with them. On this platform, I aim to utilize my passion for writing in the best possible manner, using it as a medium to share whatever knowledge I have with the readers.
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