Is your art stressing people out?

 Stress is related to the environment you live in. As an artist, the ideal is 

to live in calm, peaceful and intriguing surroundings where earth meets atmosphere.

Lida Van Bers

 Dreamer Dream No More

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/dreamer-dream-no-more-lianne-schneider.html

I know my title today seems like an absurd question, particularly if you pursue some aspect of the creative arts specifically as a mechanism to be an outlet for yourself, to be cathartic or therapeutic for you or in some way to relax after a stressful day or week. But it's possible that what works in a positive way for you is actually inducing stress in your viewers!! Oh no!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How could that be and what does that mean in terms of marketing?

Well first - let's look at color -

 

A new study published in Science magazine revealed that while the color red can help you be more accurate in your work, the color blue spurs creativity. For most people, red signals caution, danger or mistakes while blue suggests relaxation, peace and freedom. Blue is more conducive to imaginative problem solving while red stimulates attention to detail, recall and being "right." Sounds as if red is more stress inducing than blue - at least initially. 

"People are not aware of this effect at all," says researcher Juliet Zhu of the University of British Columbia, who studies how environmental cues affect behavior. It's entirely a subconscious response. The subconscious effect of color is a hot area of psychology research, in part because marketers try to use color to hook people onto whatever they are trying to sell.

What about straight lines versus curves? Our brains are actually hardwired to prefer curves - even in architecture! Time and again, when asked, people prefer rooms and buildings and objects that are curved rather than linear - watches with round faces over square ones, for example. We like rooms to have more curves than stark lines, even if we have to accomplish that by floor design, furniture style. etc. There's a fabulous article on architectural design and emotion here.

So what does all this have to do with whether the art we're creating is causing negative emotions or stress in our viewers and whether it's more or less marketable because of the choices we make? Even putting your images on a blue background can make a difference apparently according to researchers studying the effects of color on advertising. But, there's one more factor to consider...countless studies show that images of nature or that give the impression of nature in terms of color, curve and subject matter actually reduce stress and leave people feeling more positive. Here's a little test to see how your brain responds to certain images. Consider that your own response is likely to be the same as the majority of people who view your art...we may make fun of "pretty pictures" but apparently they sell for a very good reason - people feel good looking at them! Abstracts too that people can associate with natural curves and favorite colors are usually more popular than stark geometrics in colors associated with danger or darkness. At least, that's what the research suggests...I understand about the curves and nature but I'm not certain I agree about color. I think a good deal depends on hue and brightness and where on the spectrum your color palette fits best. I'm going to keep a close eye on what is selling over the next few days and see if they're right.

Wild and free

"In the beginning and the end, human beings are creatures of the wild"

Sam Keen - Fire in the Belly

 Sanctuary

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/sanctuary-lianne-schneider.html

It’s probably only logical and appropriate that this list of heroic virtues end with the virtue of wildness. Sam Keen makes the case that we are over-domesticated – probably over urbanized and at the mercy of increasingly complex technology, too, I’d add. Many of my literary heroes – Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman – wrote compellingly of the human need to be in touch with nature, to experience our own “wildness” and to escape the paralyzing conformity of contemporary society. That was 150 years ago and yet, Thoreau’s advice is more important than ever. “We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and un-explorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, un-surveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” [Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods]

How many of us have in defending some resistance to formal religion at times, exclaimed, “But I experience the Divine best in nature?” Today, the virtue of wildness, the ideal and idea of wilderness are more important than ever for human beings to maintain our balance, find some outer peace to match the inner peace we strive for, and to preserve that legacy for future generations.

Rather than go on at length about my own feelings about the need for wildness and for preserving the wilderness, I am going to share the introduction to a free pdf essay by TinaMarie Ekker. I’ll provide the link for you to read it in its entirety if you wish at the end of this introductory passage.

 

The Idea of Wilderness

“Wilderness is Relationship. All cultures across history set places apart from the routines and common behaviors of daily life. The purpose of these special places is to reorient our focus and perceptions in a setting that is conducive to reflection. We approach such places differently than we do the usual places in our daily lives, and it is the restraint in this interaction that makes them special, enabling us to experience the unique values these places provide in nurturing the human spirit. Examples include shrines, memorials, and ceremonial sites. Wilderness also is such a place.

 

Like all special places set apart, Wilderness is not just a geographic location, it is an idea and an ideal. The “idea” of wilderness encompasses certain values that we as a society have chosen to protect. Congress enacted the Wilderness Act in 1964, with the singular statutory purpose of securing the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness:

          

            It is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people

of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. For

this purpose there is hereby established a National Wilderness Preservation System.

            (emphasis added) (The Wilderness Act, Sec. 2(a))

The Wilderness Act intended that Wilderness would have meaning, that it would be protected for something, not simply be a place where certain activities, such as logging, do not occur. Although Wilderness may look similar to other undeveloped landscapes such as national park back-country, it is the way that humans interact with Wilderness that makes it different from other landscapes.

In preserving Wilderness we are essentially preserving an endangered experience, and an endangered idea — the idea that self-willed landscape has value and should exist. Wilderness offers the opportunity to experience a relationship between humans and nature that is increasingly rare in our modern world, a relationship in which humans do not dominate, manipulate, or control nature but instead immerse ourselves as a member in the larger community of life. 

What makes this possible is the authenticity of Wilderness. This authenticity offers us a window into a world other than the world humans have constructed and now dominate. It is the authenticity of Wilderness that gives it deep meaning, imbuing it with immense intrinsic value as part of the ancient fabric of the earth. 

What keeps Wilderness ‘real’ and alive in our world today is the attitude with which we approach and interact with these Congressionally designated landscapes. In this way, ‘Wilderness’ is not just physical geography, it is also a concept that must be protected and preserved if Wilderness - not just undeveloped landscape - is to continue to exist for future generations to experience and enjoy.” 

To read the rest of this exceptional essay on the value of wilderness (it’s well worth the time), please go to http://www.nuibooks.com/the-idea-of-wilderness-PDF-35225619.html 

 

As artists and writers we can make such a marvelous contribution to this virtue in our work…perhaps that is our great gift - that we are privileged to capture and preserve this ideal in paintings, photographs, stories and poems.