Why making art is the new meditation

Soma Mandal Datta Author

In this article, we discuss why and how making art is the new meditation and leading happy, healthy lives

Why making art is the new meditation

You don't need to sit cross-legged and empty your mind to get meditation's benefits. Research — and thirteen years of watching it happen in my own students — suggests a paintbrush works just as well.

Introduction

I hear a version of the same sentence from new students constantly: "I can't meditate, I can't sit still long enough." I understand it completely — sitting in silence, trying to think about nothing, is genuinely hard for a lot of people. What I've watched happen instead, over and over in my thirteen years of teaching, is that the exact same people find their way into a meditative state without even trying, the moment they pick up a brush.

That's not just an encouraging anecdote — it's backed by real research. Meditation is a practice for improving wellbeing by quieting the mind and redirecting focus away from negative thoughts, and it's been shown to reduce stress, sharpen concentration, and build self-awareness (Araujo et al., 2019; Sadhasivam et al., 2020). Making art produces strikingly similar effects — and unlike seated meditation, it doesn't require you to fight your own restlessness to get there. Research also shows these benefits aren't reserved for "real" artists: prior art experience has no bearing on whether you gain them (Kaimal et al., 2017). If you're curious whether painting could work as your alternative to meditation, here's what the evidence — and my own classroom — suggests.

What meditation actually is

Meditation is an ancient practice used for centuries to support spiritual development and mental wellbeing. At its core, it's the practice of training your mind to focus on a single object or thought — breath, a mantra, an image — until you reach a state of stillness and presence. It's been shown to ease stress, anxiety, depression, and even chronic pain (Goyal et al., 2014).

But if the idea of sitting still and clearing your mind sounds more stressful than relaxing, you're not alone — and you're not without options.

Why art-making works as meditation

When you're absorbed in making something, there's genuinely no spare attention left to worry about anything else. Psychologists call this flow — a term introduced by Csikszentmihalyi and still studied today (Peifer et al., 2022) — a state where you're so focused on what you're doing that everything else falls away, time seems to compress, and you're simply present. It's functionally very close to what seated meditation is trying to achieve, just reached through doing rather than through stillness.

The physiological evidence backs this up. A 2016 study found that just 45 minutes of art-making measurably lowered cortisol, the body's primary stress hormone, in the large majority of participants — regardless of their prior art experience (Kaimal, Ray & Muniz, 2016). Separately, research on creativity and brain function has linked new creative outlets to increased dopamine — a neurotransmitter often found at low levels in people experiencing anxiety or depression (Zaidel, 2014). And a broader review of the literature on art and self-esteem found psychological wellbeing and mental health closely tied to creative engagement (Franklin, 1992).

What this adds up to, practically: when your mind is occupied with colour, shape, and mark-making, it genuinely has less room left for bills, deadlines, or dinner plans — and that redirection alone is where a lot of the stress relief comes from.

7 reasons painting supports health and wellbeing

1. Meditative and therapeutic benefits. The state of flow you enter while painting mirrors meditation closely: focused, present, and free of the usual mental noise — with the same physiological and psychological payoffs.
2. Better self-connection. Painting offers a genuine escape from daily noise — a way to release fear and worry and reconnect with something quieter underneath it. Creating or engaging with art brings you closer to yourself and to the world around you.
3. A new way of perceiving things. Making art asks you to let go of preconceptions and simply be in the moment. It's a low-stakes way to take risks, step outside your comfort zone, and discover more of what you're actually capable of.
4. Artistic self-expression. Art gives you a way to share parts of yourself that words alone don't reach — a language for communicating emotion, connecting with others, and working through difficult experiences.
5. Self-reflection. Creating or viewing art is a genuine tool for understanding your own thoughts and feelings, and for stepping outside your everyday life to see yourself a little differently.
6. Self-care. Art therapy has been shown to help manage anxiety, depression, and pain. Even something as simple as mandala colouring has been shown to reduce stress in older adults (Koo, Chen & Yeh, 2020) — the format matters less than showing up for it regularly.
7. A genuine sense of achievement. Research on free art-making has found it measurably boosts self-efficacy — your belief in your own ability to handle a task — even for people with no prior art background. I see this constantly in my own students: the shift isn't really about the finished painting, it's about what finishing something does for how capable you feel afterward. (I go deeper on this same research in The Power of Surrender, if you'd like the full picture.)

No matter which of these lands with you most, the important part is giving yourself the time and space to actually do it. When you make art a priority, you send yourself a real message: that you're worth taking care of.

Mindfulness through art

Mindfulness — a form of meditation focused on emotional and mental wellbeing — asks us to slow down, be present, and engage all our senses. Painting is one of the most natural ways I know to practise this, because full immersion is almost unavoidable once you're absorbed in the process. When you paint mindfully, you often access ideas and images your racing, distracted mind would otherwise talk over — which is where a lot of genuinely original work comes from.

Researcher A. Sarah Bass found something similar in her work on creative flow: making process-driven art tends to sharpen focus and boost both productivity and wellbeing, and the clearer we get about our own goals and desires through that process, the closer we move toward living more authentic, contented lives (Bass, 2007).

Getting started

Making art as a meditative practice isn't about the finished piece — it's about staying present in the process without fixating on the outcome. In my experience, and echoed by the research above, a few things make this easier:

1. Let go of whether the work is "good." The point is enjoying the process, not producing a masterpiece.
2. Be fearless. Experiment with mediums, colours, and techniques you wouldn't normally reach for.
3. Let mistakes happen, and treat them as happy accidents rather than failures.
4. Stay playfully curious — "what if I tried this?" is a better question than "will this turn out right?"
5. Trust your instincts. If something feels right, follow it.

Conclusion

Making art isn't just a new way to meditate — for a lot of people who find traditional meditation genuinely difficult, it may be the easiest one. It's a tool for quieting mental noise, working through emotions words can't quite reach, and building both self-esteem and self-connection along the way. All you really need to start is some basic supplies and the willingness to begin.

If this resonates, I'd love to help you build it into a regular practice. My Palette, Paint, and Possibilities coaching program is built around exactly this kind of mindset work, or start with my free Paint Your Way to Well-Being guide for more ways to bring this into your own routine. And if the idea of letting go of outcome-fixation resonates, my post on the butterfly effect in art digs further into how small, low-pressure actions compound over time.

Happy painting!

Bibliography

Araujo, Raquel Vilanova, Ana Fátima Carvalho Fernandes, Inez Sampaio Nery, Elaine Andrade, Lídya Tolstenko Nogueira and Francisco Honeidy Carvalho Azevedo. "Meditation effect on psychological stress level in women with breast cancer: a systematic review." Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da U S P 53 (2019): e 03529.

Bass, A. Sarah. "Dancing in the Moment: Unlocking Your Creative Flow." The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences: Annual Review 1 (2007): 155-172.

Goyal M, Singh S, Sibinga E. M., Gould N.F., Rowland-Seymour A, Sharma R, Berger Z, Sleicher D, Maron D. D., Shihab H. M., Ranasinghe P.D., Linn S, Saha S, Bass E.B., Haythornthwaite J.A. Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Intern Med. 2014 Mar;174(3):357-68.

Franklin, Michael. "Art Therapy and Self-Esteem." Art Therapy 9:2 (1992): 78-84.

Kaimal G, Ray K, Muniz J. Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants' Responses Following Art Making. Art Therapy 33(2) (2016): 74-80.

Kaimal, Girija, Hasan Ayaz, Joanna Herres, Rebekka Dieterich-Hartwell, Bindal Makwana, Donna Kaiser and Jennifer Nasser. "Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy Assessment of Reward Perception Based on Visual Self-expression: Coloring, Doodling, and Free Drawing." The Arts in Psychotherapy 55 (2017).

Koo, M., Chen, H. P., & Yeh, Y. C. "Coloring Activities for Anxiety Reduction and Mood Improvement in Taiwanese Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Study." Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2020 (2020): 6964737.

Peifer, Corinna, et al. "A Scoping Review of Flow Research." Frontiers in Psychology 13 (2022).

Sadhasivam, Senthilkumar, et al. "Inner Engineering Practices and Advanced 4-day Isha Yoga Retreat Are Associated with Cannabimimetic Effects with Increased Endocannabinoids and Short-Term and Sustained Improvement in Mental Health." Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2020 (2020).

Zaidel DW. "Creativity, brain, and art: biological and neurological considerations." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (2014): 389.

Categories: : creative me-time, Wellbeing