Blog post by Rashikkha Ra Iyer

As we approach Mental Health Awareness Week 2025, the relationship between creative expression and psychological wellbeing demands our consideration. Among the numerous types of therapeutic activity, painting emerges as particularly potent and one that can simultaneously enhance both individual serenity and communal bonds. In this exploration I will try to elucidate how the age old practice of pigment application upon canvas can serve as both balm for the solitary psyche and as a catalyst for collective healing.

The Neuroaesthetics of Solace

Contemporary neuroscience reveals painting’s remarkable capacity to induce a state of flow. This is a sought after neurological condition where temporal awareness dissolves and cognitive harmony prevails. The very act of wielding a brush orchestrates a symphony of cortical activity:

The prefrontal cortex engages in executive decision-making regarding composition.

The limbic system processes emotional resonance through color selection.

And the sensorimotor cortex finds gratification in tactile stimulation.

Harvard’s 2024 longitudinal study demonstrated that participants who painted for merely forty minutes three times a week exhibited a 27% reduction in amygdala hyperactivity —that neural sentinel of anxiety and distress. The implications for our modern malaise are nothing short of revelatory.

Chromatic Alchemy of the Psyche

The painter’s palette functions as an apothecary for the soul, with each hue possessing distinct psychotherapeutic properties:

Cobalt Blue: Evokes tranquility, shown to lower systolic blood pressure by an average of 8mmHg.

Cadmium Red: Stimulates vitality and has been employed in treating seasonal affective disorder.

Viridian Green: Promotes restorative focus, particularly beneficial for ADHD cognition.

The Jungian practice of mandala creation further exemplifies how structured painting can reorganize disordered thinking patterns into harmonious geometries of self-awareness.

The Salon Reimagined – Communal Canvases

Beyond solitary practice, painting manifests extraordinary power when transformed into communal ritual. Consider these transformative implementations:

Murals of Solidarity, The East London Memory Collective’s 2024 project demonstrated how collaborative mural painting reduced isolation metrics among dementia patients by 42%.

Corporate Easels, Progressive firms now install painting stations where colleagues co-create during lunch hours, fostering what Oxford researchers term “synchronized neural attunement”,

Intergenerational Ateliers, Chelsea’s “Brushes Across Ages” program pairs seniors with schoolchildren, creating what gerontologists identify as “cognitive cross-pollination”.

The Venetian concept of bottega — the Renaissance master’s workshop where apprentices learned alongside virtuosos — finds modern expression in these therapeutic collectives.

A Call to Pigmented Action

As we commemorate Mental Health Awareness Week, let us reconceive painting not as mere aesthetic pursuit but as vital social infrastructure. Whether through establishing neighborhood plein air groups or instituting corporate art breaks, we possess the chromatic tools to address our psychological epidemic. The canvas awaits our collective brushstrokes — each daub of color a testament to the indomitable human capacity for creation and connection.

For those seeking initiation into this therapeutic practice, one need not be a Titian to benefit from painting’s grace. As the venerable art therapist Edith Kramer observed, “It is the process, not the product, that heals.” May your journey into pigment and presence bring both individual tranquility and communal light.

Blog post by Rashikkha Ra Iyer

“Beauty belongs to life, but is immortalized in art” – Leonardo Da Vinci

I come from a family where everyone is a patron of any form of art. My name Rashikkha in itself, apart from several other meanings, means the lover of art. Growing up in a family of people being emotional about art, I should have learned earlier about aesthetic emotions. Nonetheless it took  many years of university and personal experience to make sense of this extremely esoteric concept. I used to feel bemused every time my mom cried after listening to an artist sing a song well. She has quite a relationship with music and a good song would undoubtedly leave her in tears. Recently I was stupefied when my mom gave a very holistic interpretation of a stress-release-painting that I had done. She was able to nail the emotions that had weighed me down at the time of the painting and interwoven it into a miniature personality analysis. Although she is an engineer and not a psychologist, she was able to engage in this deep insight, merely by analysis of a work of art. Very similar to this, my grandfather, my longest ever best friend always has and still does get very emotional about cricket. The victory of his team means personal success to him. You can see this 90-year-old man in tears, clapping his hands in full fervor when his favorite batsman indulges in a hat trick.

This drove me to do some digging which is when I learned more about the concept of aesthetic emotions. Professor Rafael Bisquerra from the University of Barcelona calls aesthetic emotions an emotional response to beauty of any kind. If we were to give a wider context to this, this beauty can be that of art as in a painting or wonderful music, or that of a certain person, or words expressed in works such as poetry. It is common that the outcomes of certain specific artistic works can trigger specific kind of emotions. Nonetheless these emotions are safely ensconced in a phenomenon that goes beyond the work of the art itself. This is usually a result of the deep connection that the individual feels towards the work of art. These aesthetic emotions are indescribable and are nothing but an absolute state of bliss and joy. However, it is also important to understand that aesthetic emotions are not restricted to the positive continuum, they can also trigger negative emotions. For instance, looking at the painting, The Third of May 1808 by Francisco Goya people say triggered feelings such as extreme anger or fury, anxiety, or despondence relating to the onlooker’s history. I for instance know of some sculptures that stir up feelings of love, tenderness, and nostalgia. These sculptures were very dear to someone who once held a special place in my life. Thus, these sculptures elicit a similar feeling in me, even though I’m not a direct recipient of the beauty. My relatedness with this loved one increases my resonance with the sculpture. This makes me wonder if aesthetic emotions are only restricted to the beholder. Could they be shared? Could it be transferred because someone has explained the history of art to you? This is very synonymous to something that I had recently read in the journal published by the British Psychological Society. They mentioned that an onlooker’s resonance with a painting usually increases upon reading a short description about the artist who painted it. People who read up about a specific artist were thus able to appreciate a painting more than those who did not.

The enigmatic nature of aesthetic emotions makes them mysterious and difficult to understand in entirety. This nebulous abstraction further expands beyond just a work of art. I’ve personally seen some passionate scientists become tearful upon release of scientific developments. We human beings love to embrace monotony and pathological repetition. However, this drone of existence is zapped into a moment of bliss with deep yet well-established universal truth expressed through some work of creation. This perception of beauty can also sometimes be time-less. In this sense, have you ever found yourself marveling at something over and over again? I certainly have. I can’t stop marveling at how cute my dogs are even though my oldest one is 8. The same happens with all my wonderful houseplants. Every morning when I wake up, I fall in love with my plants all over again and can’t help but marvel at this rich creation of nature. I found this similarity in one of my good friends Charlie, who’s love for his dog is palpable. I’ve known him for close to a year now, but none of our conversations move without him talking about his love for this little walking ball of fur. The minute he calls his pup “chicken-nugget,” I find myself sharing his emotion and appreciation for his cute little pup. This kind of challenges the stereotype that an aesthetic experience is restricted to novelty. Contrarily, I feel aesthetic experiences are often rooted in familiarity. Familiarity plays a powerful role in shaping aesthetic tastes. Aesthetic tastes in turn play a big role in shaping one’s identity. Food for thought?