This is my first blog post about my passion project!! To be completely honest, I am still in the process of refining my question and planning out what steps I am going to take to begin my inquiry, BUT the direction I’m going is somewhere along the lines of “does exercising creative expression improve mental health?”

For me personally, art (in particular, painting) is a huge outlet for me. Whenever I paint I feel more relaxed and calm and just in my element––unfortunately though I don’t get to paint all too often. So, in my brainstorming of inquiry questions, I started wondering if incorporating art into my life on a weekly basis would make me feel calmer and more creative or make me feel more stressed––and then also on a wider scale… how does creative expression affect mental health?

This is a painting that I did over the summer!

Other questions I considered were “does incorporating art into your life on a regular basis increase creativity?” “How can you incorporate art into various subjects in schools?” and also broader ones such as “What is the purpose of art?” or “Why is creative expression innately important to humans?” All of these are extremely interesting and important questions to ask, however, both art and mental health are subjects I’m passionate about, and I’m always looking for ways to decrease my stress levels and excuses to paint more 🙂