Painting Easel Reviews

Ways In Which Painting Brings Out Creativity

In the society of our modern times where pragmatism and the sciences reign supreme in the collective mindset and where funding to many arts programs is becoming more and more scarce, far too many people are not encouraged to explore their creative side, and are often not even aware that they actually have one at all.Unfortunate stereotypes such as the so-called starving artist and popular associations with mental health problems have led to the disregard and even stigmatization of most forms of art. Even positive but unrealistic portrayals engender the notion that art is removed from and utterly irrelevant to one's own modern life. Yet for any age group, engaging in artistic endeavors such as painting has been proven to have exponentially positive effects on our well-being and the well-being of those around us.As a whole, young children as students in school almost universally enjoy artistic endeavors such as painting and learning how to do so, and the ability for them to choose and bring colors to life on a blank canvas in order to render what comes to their minds concrete and tangible hones their sense of mastery, confidence, hand-eye coordination, visualization, and a host of other interrelated skills crucial for proper development, engaging them all in many different areas and doing so all at once.Learning to express oneself and make new connections between things can easily spill over into other areas of life in a very positive way. Painting in conjunction with other forms of learning can help integrate different approaches and facets of individual subjects, as demonstrated by, say, learning about and replicating artwork by painters during particular periods of history to convey knowledge in a way words alone cannot manage to.Even a short amount of time spent on painting and with cheap materials can be fun, educational and therapeutic for children, which in turn can also lead to an improved dynamic with other family members and peers. A plethora of studies have also proven that painting can improve linguistic and communicative development in children, as describing to their parents and peers about what they paint and see stimulates the acquisition of new vocabulary and leads to greater awareness of one's surroundings. Helping them find quiet and focused activities to engage in can help ease stress and eat away at restless energy, in turn leading to better balance and adjustment in other areas of life.Even as adults, painting can help manage stress and cope with some of the trappings of modern life. This in turn can help provide us relief from the sometimes cramped and sterile confines of expectations and responsibilities that engender complacency and stifling conformity. Painting and other forms of art can newly stimulate our dormant individual expression and ability to think outside the box of modern adulthood, leading to fresh solutions and approaches for other areas of adult life, such as relationships and jobs.If nothing else, painting when one usually has little time or interest in doing so is by itself a refreshing break from the normal routine that gives you free reign to create anything of your choosing, without cumbersome regard for approval or monetary profit. If done alone at home, it encourages being satisfied in one's own company, and if done as part of an art class or group session, it encourages meaningful socialization. This is beneficial for developing one's creative interest and ability for an increasingly connected and diverse world that can be unpredictable with new challenges and changes arising and grounding individuals and helping them feel more connected against insularity, isolation and stagnation, personally as well as socially.Painting can also encourage us to change how we look at ourselves by giving us, no matter our level of proficiency, the confidence to identify ourselves as artists and realize that progress and fulfillment are more important than perfection and profit. The tangibility of the activity helps demystify the image of the artist in the popular mindset and reminds us of their fundamental humanity. In reassessing our own self-image and perceived abilities, we can have a new and improved outlook towards our own lives, shattering our limiting beliefs in the process.Painting with different colors in unique combinations over a blank canvas, in addition to spurring the formation of new ideas and connections of things one already knows, can also help find novel solutions to otherwise seemingly intractable problems. When the mind is blank like a canvas, painting with different colors can lead to innovation and discovery. Failure to even try, however, can leave one stuck in empty stagnation almost indefinitely.Many students in classrooms or workers in their respective workplaces doodle during any free time they can muster. This demonstrates not only our often unsung capabilities for time management but also the underlying importance of creative outlets to manage the stresses of everyday responsibilities and expectations. In fact there should really be no true dichotomy between the two, and is no different than, say, a break for lunch or the restroom. You can either create something at your leisure or perhaps challenge yourself to do something a bit different to vary things up a bit. This can help you

• relax
• clear your head to face challenges from a new angle
• encourage you to explore what exactly you want and how to convey it, which is a communicative skill that translates easily into just about all other areas of life

In addition to what materializes on the blank canvas in front of you, there is so much more going on in your subconscious mind. According to the former president of the American Art Therapy Association and current neuroscience professor Christianne Strang of the University of Alabama Birmingham, "creativity in and of itself is important for remaining healthy, remaining connected to yourself and connected to the world." According to Drexel University professor and art therapy researcher Girija Kaimal, "anything that engages your creative mind — the ability to make connections between unrelated things and imagine new ways to communicate — is good for you." Her current research involves conducting art classes with injured veterans and cancer patients to help them heal.Regardless of the particular art form involved, engaging artistically on a blank canvas both figuratively and literally allows nearly endless possibilities as to what to create and how. No matter the age, reason, or level of proficiency, perceived or actual, it is something worth incorporating into one's daily routine for a variety of reasons, one of them being that it gives the opportunity to not only create things in an open-ended way, but to do with positive emotions like hope, which can have huge implications for those suffering from stress, depression, or any other set of issues. The ability to envision a better future and make it tangible can be a life-changing affirmation instilling mastery and confidence of oneself or one's surroundings.The history of painting stretches back to antiquity, which is not surprising due to its universal nature. This is plainly visible in the form of the many cave paintings done by prehistoric peoples, as well as the artistic traditions of many age-old cultures such as the Aboriginal Australians. So even apart from the personal purposes of painting are the collective and evolutionary in the form of the transmission of culture, the diffusion of ideas, and the retelling of history and events.In addition to the aforementioned purposes of painting, there is another: according to aforementioned Drexel University professor and art therapy researcher Girija Kaimal, painting involves possibly even brainstorming solutions for issues that could potentially arise in the future, based on the predictive adaptability built into and used by our brains to make the right decisions and secure our survival in the long run.Indeed the entire process of painting, from choosing colors and brushes to interpreting and translating what you paint and see throughout is comprised of many individual yet interconnected decisions, akin to those that happen daily both consciously and subconsciously to help us imagine how we may be able best to deal with what awaits us ahead in the future and secure ourselves psychologically.Aforementioned Drexel University professor and art therapy researcher Girija Kaimal has witnessed this phenomenon occur in her very own clinical practice with a very depressed student who had described feeling hopeless and having low grades due to her despair. Unsurprisingly she then blackened an entire sheet of paper with a thick marker to symbolize her outlook at the time, to which aforementioned Drexel University professor and art therapy researcher Girija Kaimal did not respond. After the student stared at the black piece of paper for a period of time, she remarked on the dreariness of what she had created before deciding to create something more positive, in this case flowers that reminded her of the spring season.This seemingly miraculous turn-around demonstrates the power of painting to help people use their imagination to envision and construct a more desirable future and transcend their immediate surroundings and circumstances. It also shows that it can not only help deal with future problems, but rise above and conquer them entirely. In any case, it is ultimately a form of survival.In addition to such visible demonstrations of painting's power are the biological happenings that go on right inside the brain itself. The brain's reward center releases chemicals like dopamine that cause an improvement in mood and energy when triggered by certain activities and stimuli. Painting is one such activity, and though indecision and a lack of confidence in one's own self and ability can serve as an unfortunate roadblock to engaging in the activity in the first place, the triggering of the reward center of your brain and increased blood flow there as demonstrated by research will cause the painting to be registered as a pleasurable experience overall, therefore making it worth doing. This can be hugely beneficial for those who may be suffering from an ailment that involves either a hyperactivity or malfunctioning of the reward center of the brain such as addictive tendencies and eating and mood disorders, as the aforementioned research indicates.Continuing in this vein with the human body's biological responses to artistic expressions, painting can be demonstrated to lower stress levels, as can be not only qualified by subjective reported experience but also quantified by measuring the levels of stress hormones like cortisol in the blood stream before and after engaging in painting. Research conducted by aforementioned Drexel University professor and art therapy researcher Girija Kaimal and other researches discovered that less than an hour of painting lowered the participants' cortisol levels significantly. Furthermore, regardless of subjective personal assessments of creative ability, participants of all levels of skill and all walks of life both subjectively and objectively benefited all the same by the end of the study.Painting also helps facilitate the maintenance of mindfulness, which is a sort of self awareness that arises from being completely immersed mentally in the present moment rather than preoccupied with what may lie ahead or stuck living in the past. This in turn can help release pent up energy that can then be redirected into other activities constructively with greater clarity and focus than if one had tried to handle many different tasks simultaneously and halfheartedly.Painting can have different effects on different people, and each individual may have to find his or her own preferred approach and style to maximize his or her own artistic and self realization. However, there is no approach that is necessarily better than another in absolute terms, nor is there only one method that everyone must choose. It is an ongoing and personal endeavor that requires intuition and adaptability.Nonetheless, the benefits of painting are almost guaranteed for anyone who engages in it and the people around them. These include

• lowering stress
• increasing pleasure and confidence
• focusing more deeply
• socializing
• being more emotionally available for others
• processing emotions effectively when other means of expression and communication aren't quite enough

In other words: survival.