Today’s Mood Busting Art
Is it possible to bust through a bad mood with art?
Garden Holiday by Dorothea Sandra, EDAC
As many of you know, we live in “interesting” times. So many people today are stressed or sad or deeply troubled by something or someone. I like to use my art to fight against this by creating credible pieces that bust through these moods and create upward movement feelings of happiness and hope and joy. Using well-researched guidelines, I like to reach inside the brain through art and help shift a negative mood into something positive.
From the 1960s until today, serious researchers with very serious studies…from different countries…from different multidisciplinary fields have converged to create a new field of art called Evidence-based Design. According to the National Library of Medicine at the National Institute of Health, “Evidence-based design is scientific analysis methodology that emphasizes the use of data acquired in order to influence the design process in hospitals. It measures the physical and psychological effects of the built environment on its users.”
Today, evidence-based design isn’t just for hospitals. It’s for all of us. It is for many of the places humans go. What is my role in all of this? A very small one—but I think an important one. Today my art hangs in hospitals, businesses, organizations, and homes. Using my artistic talents and evidence-based design training and certification—just as I did in this triptych art called Happy Garden—I very deliberately and very strategically create happy, happy art for today’s built environments.
People often ask me where I get my inspiration for this style of painting I call Bubble Art. These photos of flowers come from just two of my yards in Northern Michigan. I live in a super clean, healthy environment and inspiration always seems to be all around me—everywhere I seem to look. Nature is a truly powerful healer. When we can’t be out in it, putting art on our walls that captures nature’s fun and beauty often helps.
(I keep 100 percent pesticide-free yards with many bee and butterfly friendly plants. The bees this years are plentiful. I have even seen up to 8-10 bees on one bush.)
In a Garden Holiday, I used my evidence-based knowledge to select the cheerful background color. I painted the flowers in soil to give the artwork a rooted to our life-giving earth feel. Flowers and stems are never similar or boring in nature, so I gave this work an abundance of fun-filled stem twists and turns, pops full of flowery color, and many hints of humor.
If you would like to learn a bit more about evidence-based design and see how I applied it to my art, my new book, 100 Days Of Happy Happy Art, Evidence-Based Design, is available through Amazon.
Creating Power And Beauty In Art
Powerful Beauty is an amazing artwork people love to see.
Powerful Beauty is an amazing piece that people just love to see.
At the opening reception for a summer gallery exhibit, I was standing in front of this painting while talking to a NYC handbag designer for two world-famous fashion brands (who also bought one of my paintings that evening) when a very tall, amazingly elegant woman brushed behind me and whispered, “I l-o-v-e this piece!”
What makes Powerful Beauty such a winner?
To begin with, it was strategically designed to arouse and grab and gently caress. It’s beauty was deliberate and intentional. I am above all else an abstract artist, but I also trained and got certified in evidence-based design. I support the idea of basing designs on actual medical and scientific studies for health and healing and, like the many tools and techniques I use as an artist, I don’t hesitate to use these evidence-based design rules and guidelines while creating even abstract art.
The goal for Powerful Beauty was to create something abstract and full of movement but also balanced, stable, and beautiful to view.
If you would like more information about an artist’s adventures with evidence-based design, check out the book 100 Days Of Happy Happy Art, Evidence-Based Design by Dorothea Sandra.
It’s not just an art book. There’s lots of really cool and thoughtful information in it like, “What Exactly Is The Definition Of Evidence-Based Design?” (Section 1.4) to “What Happens To Our Brains On Art?” (Section 3.1) and “What Is Neuroarts?” (Section 3.2).
So, where did I get the inspiration for this piece? My studio is located in a Great Lakes region surrounded by amazing bodies of water. Almost everywhere I go, I am surrounded by raw, authentic, super clean NATURE. At first sight, this area might look ordinary or just another stretch of beach with rocks and sand, but when you look deeper and capture “the essence” of what is happening all around, it’s truly amazing. There’s always some kind of power or beauty happening.
