How Art Can Change Your Life (2024)

$19.95

Offering helpful guidance, this illustrated handbook introduces new ways of viewing art and shows how anyone can use art to work through difficult emotions and improve their mental state.

Enlightening, challenging, and informative, visual art can also be therapeutic, reducing anxiety and stress levels, and offering perspective on the challenges that we all face in our lives. How Art Can Change Your Life introduces readers to new ways of looking at a wide range of art. Through careful examination and explanation, author Susie Hodge investigates how engaging with art and drawing can help everyone feel more connected and inspired.

From Frida Kahlo confronting her anxieties to Henri Matisse embracing happiness, and from Louise Bourgeois conquering fear to Auguste Rodin finding hope, this book will show how you too can use art to work through difficult emotions and improve your mental state. All art can broaden knowledge, give enjoyment, and challenge our assumptions; but it can also help soothe, calm, enlighten, and uplift the mind and spirit. Even art that leaves us uncomfortable can still help us to think differently and give us new perspective.

In twelve chapters, readers will learn how art can dissipate anger, help to overcome sorrow, inspire self-reflection, as well as tackle other mental challenges. Artists have been conveying aspirations, feelings, ideas, and stories for thousands of years, and this book will help everyone "read" those messages with the goal of enriching their own emotional life through art.

88 illustrations

- Susie Hodge
- 192 pages
- 5.9 inches W x 8.4 inches L
- Paperback
- Thames & Hudson
- 2022
- Techniques
- Item #: 978-0500024935

How Art Can Change Your Life (2024)

FAQs

How does art change our life? ›

Art gives us meaning and helps us understand our world. Scientific studies have proven that art appreciation improves our quality of life and makes us feel good. When we create art, we elevate our mood, we improve our ability to problem solve, and open our minds to new ideas.

Why is art useful in life? ›

Art is not just an expression of emotion but also a medium for communicating ideas. It can act as therapeutic relief, a conduit for self-expression, or simply a way to appreciate life's beauty. Through art, we can chronicle history, embody societal values, and comment on political or social events.

What is the 10 importance of art? ›

It helps to develop motor skills, eye-hand coordination and has a large impact on their social and emotional growth. It also enhances their cognitive development which can have a positive effect on math skills and other related subjects. Promote creativity in your child's life in as many ways as you can.

How does art reflect your life? ›

Art has the power to change the way we see the world, awakening us to new perspectives, ideas, and values. It can take us back in time to reflect on our past or push us further into our future. Art can bring awareness to social issues and foster a sense of acceptance — bringing people together regardless of background.

How does art connect people? ›

When individuals have a way to express themselves, their community benefits from their well-being. Having access to visual art and experiencing the creation of art helps humans contextualize their experiences and connects them to others through the expression of shared identity.

How does art affect the brain? ›

There is increasing evidence in rehabilitation medicine and the field of neuroscience that art enhances brain function by impacting brain wave patterns, emotions, and the nervous system. Art can also raise serotonin levels. These benefits don't just come from making art, they also occur by experiencing art.

What are three benefits of art? ›

Some of the specific benefits that we have seen is that the arts can improve concentration. They can improve self-esteem. They can actually reduce stress.

How can art inspire people? ›

Art has the incredible ability to stir emotions and spark conversations. It can create empathy and understanding, challenge the status quo, and inspire action. Whether it's a painting, a photograph, or a piece of performance art, art has a way of connecting people and inspiring them to take action.

What are the five purposes of art? ›

∎ There are five purposes for visual art: Ceremonial, Artistic Expression, Narrative, Functional and Persuasive. -Ceremonial art is made to celebrate or commemorate something important in the culture, in ritual or worship, or in personal life.

What is the 7 purpose of art? ›

Let me list the functions in a rather dry way, the book will explain more: art works can help us to remember what matters; they also lend us hope; they dignify sorrow; they expand our horizons; they help us to understand ourselves; they rebalance us; and lastly they make us appreciate the familiar anew.

What are the 4 things that art does for us? ›

Art can communicate information, shape our everyday lives, make a social statement and be enjoyed for aesthetic beauty.

What are the 7 main things of art? ›

The seven elements of art are line, shape, space, value, form, texture, and color. These elements are the building blocks, or ingredients, of art. A line is a mark made on a surface. A shape is a flat area of enclosed space.

Why is art important to our life? ›

Art can help us understand our history, our culture, our lives, and the experience of others in a manner that cannot be achieved through other means. It can also be a source of inspiration, reflection, and joy.

Can art change your life? ›

Art can help, by reconnecting us to wholeness and meaning, to the unfolding of a stronger, more conscious and fulfilling way of being in the world, even if only for brief snatches of time – ah, but what blissful time!

What art teaches us in life? ›

In any work of art, there are opportunities to enjoy the process, moments to be celebrated, and milestones to achieve, but we never truly “arrive” at perfection. This same growth mindset, this same idea of always being “a work in progress,” can guide us similarly through life.

How does art fit into your life? ›

Beyond just appreciating art, creating art ourselves, even non-professionally, can be a powerful way to relax and find a moment of peace in our busy lives. Engaging in art-making as a form of mindfulness helps us express ourselves, reduces stress, and can bring a sense of accomplishment and joy.

How does art affect your daily life essay? ›

Through art we are able to see the world like never before. It inspires and motivates us to be creative. We are able to think further and beyond. In addition, art gives us the ability to understand what artists are trying to display and the messages they are trying to convey through their works.

Why is art and creativity important in everyday life? ›

Creativity allows us to view and solve problems more openly and with innovation. Creativity opens the mind. A society that has lost touch with its creative side is an imprisoned society, in that generations of people may be closed minded. It broadens our perspectives and can help us overcome prejudices.

How can art be an agent of change? ›

Artists have always been agents of cultural change; they can sway opinions, direct resistance, or reform. The aesthetic culture has a notorious ability to illustrate political truth about complicated structures of a social culture.

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