Unfortunately, stress is an everyday part of life, and there are plenty of things to be stressed about. Work, school, family life, and many other things can add an immense amount of tension to everyday life. And that’s not mentioning the harrowing physical effects that stress can have on the body.
So the question is: What’s the best way to deal with the everyday stressors of life? What are teh best ways to cope? One of the best-proven ways to cope with stress is art. Drawing, painting, and other forms of art have shown evidence of relieving stress.
Art can help express emotions, it can help visualize internal issues people are going through, or serve as a distraction from life. Art can be a tool used to depict trials and tribulations in life, it can help express anger, happiness, sadness, and fear.
It’s the best source of stress relief. When we put pen to paper the process of drawing can help us calm down or can help us convey our emotions when we don’t have words to describe our emotions, we can draw our feelings out or draw what we wanna do to help our feelings without actually hurting anybody, sometimes in life we do wanna punch people but instead of punching somebody we can draw how that person made us feel or we can draw our current life situations and problems.
Sometimes when we think of stress mixed with art we may think of splatter paint on a canvas or angry slashes of paint on the board, but sometimes it’s just drawing how we feel in our own way or can really help us when we’re really stressed and it could also relieve us of that pain sure it’s mostly through expressing how we feel, but sometimes the calmness of a pencil stroke or dipping your paintbrush into the water to clean it and get a new color can relax us or doing it in a peaceful setting can really help us relax sometimes when people get stressed out, they have a bad journal, but some artist do you have an art journal to draw how they feel about their life and then about it the drawings and there aren’t meant to be pretty or we fall out they’re just meant to represent how we feel and how we’re going to cope with our emotions and other journals in the world help artist too like destroy this journal while yes it’s for your anger or you’re stressfulness, it’s also a form of art in a way.
11th grader Msgana Shibeshi said, “I would say art calms me down when I’m stressed, I think art is a way to express yourself without words, and having that outlet can be useful at times.”
10th grader Lyana Vo said “I think about just being able to play the music I really like and just being able to play with everyone in my class. I think it’s fun when you know everyone in that class and I like playing music with the people I know. I can play very expressively and it’s just overall fun to play.”
Throughout history, other artists have used art as a form of stress relief. For example Van Gogh. In one Van Gogh made when he was feeling stressed, an old man in a chair was very upset but it has elements of Van Gogh he has projected onto, like the blue clothes Van Gogh has worn all his life and the beard that Van Gogh had too. When we use art and draw and paint, play instruments, or write our stories we interpret ourselves by using art as a scapegoat for stress and lives. Art can help us when we need it, whether it’s writing a story, playing an instrument, painting, or just doodling on homework.
