Art as Medicine: The Science of Transformation in Seeing

By Simon Kenny | 8 min read

What does it mean when we say art is medicine?

Art as medicine describes the now well-evidenced finding that aesthetic engagement produces measurable, biological change in the people who view and make it. Recent neuroaesthetic research has shown that art viewing activates dopamine reward pathways, lowers cortisol, accelerates motor recovery in clinical settings, and helps trauma survivors process what words cannot. Surrounded by art every day, I understand the power of this healing, the ways in which it goes beyond metaphor, and becomes a mechanism.

Collectors often describe their first weeks with a painting as a quiet, almost unnamable shift. Neuroaesthetics, the study of how the brain processes art, has spent the last decade unearthing the biology from within those reports. The American Psychological Association summarised the evidence in a 2025 review. Aesthetic engagement is one of the few non-invasive interventions that impacts mood, motor function and stress physiology all at once.

How does the brain complete an abstract painting?

Abstract painting forces the brain to use top-down processing. In the absence of a recognisable object, the viewer’s own memories, emotions and autobiography are recruited to assign meaning to what is on the canvas. I have explored how the absence of an object in art relieves the brain in my blog post, The Art of Seeing: How to Look at Abstract Art Like a Collector. A 2025 PNAS study confirmed that abstract works produce a person-specific neural signature, concentrated in regions linked to internally oriented thought rather than visual perception.

The 2025 paper was led by Celia Durkin with Marc Apicella, Christopher Baldassano, Eric Kandel and Daphna Shohamy at Columbia University. Twenty-nine participants were scanned with high-field fMRI while viewing Mondrian paintings, from representational to late abstract. The representational works produced consistent neural responses across the group. The abstract works did the opposite: each viewer’s brain showed a unique signature in regions associated with self-referential cognition.

Read the full PNAS study: Durkin et al., “The Beholder’s Share,” PNAS 2025.

This is what the term ‘beholder’s share’ has meant since Alois Riegl coined it. What Durkin and her colleagues have shown on the scan is that the meaning is generated by the viewer and not by the painting. Two people in front of the same canvas can have entirely different experiences, and both are telling the truth.

Claim: Abstract paintings produce significantly greater inter-individual variance in brain activity than representational paintings.
Source: Durkin C, Apicella M, Baldassano C, Kandel E, Shohamy D. “The Beholder’s Share: Bridging art and neuroscience to study individual differences in subjective experience.” PNAS, 2025. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2413871122.

Why does looking at art feel like a reward?

Because aesthetic engagement directly activates the brain’s dopamine reward system. Functional MRI research has shown that the medial orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum, the same circuits responsible for the pleasure of food, music and human connection, fire when the eye encounters work that the brain registers as art.

Lacey and colleagues, in a 2011 study, found that viewing visual art, compared with matched non-art images, selectively activated the brain’s reward circuitry, and that this response was driven by the artistic status of the image itself rather than by aesthetic preference, familiarity or response time.

I have written before, in the Silent Conversation (the first instalment of this series), about how the default mode network gives abstract painting its emotional reach. What the reward circuitry adds to that picture is a kind of internal incentive. The more a viewer can explore the meaning of a painting, the deeper the reward when meaning lands. The brain rewards itself for the cognitive effort of resolving ambiguity. I think this is part of why standing in front of an abstract work for ten or fifteen minutes can feel restorative, without anyone being able to explain why. I am lucky to experience this every day whilst painting.

Claim: Viewing visual art activates the medial orbitofrontal cortex and ventral striatum, with increased functional connectivity between visual cortex and ventral striatum during art viewing compared to non-art controls.
Source: Lacey S et al. “Art for reward’s sake: visual art recruits the ventral striatum.” NeuroImage, 2011. PMC3512461.

Can looking at art improve physical recovery?

Yes, and the effect now has a name in peer-reviewed literature. The Michelangelo Effect, first described in 2020, shows that engaging with aesthetically pleasing stimuli measurably improves motor performance. Stroke patients who paired their rehabilitation with virtual artmaking produced shorter, more efficient movements and reported lower fatigue than patients given equivalent non-aesthetic tasks.

The 2020 paper by Iosa et al. in Frontiers in Psychology placed participants in a virtual environment painting Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Compared to a blank-canvas control, art-making participants showed shorter movement trajectories and lower perceived exertion. A 2023 study carried out with stroke patients in the Journal of Clinical Medicine reported improved upper limb function when applying the Michelangelo Effect.

The proposed mechanism at work here is aesthetic arousal. The brain becomes so engaged with beauty that the perceived cost of physical effort reduces. It is great news that this practice is now under serious consideration for standard rehabilitation protocols. Beauty does not have to be confined to indulgence; the body can thrive off it.

Claim: Artmaking in a virtual environment produces shorter movement trajectories and lower perceived fatigue than equivalent non-aesthetic tasks; the effect transfers to clinical stroke rehabilitation.
Sources: Iosa M et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2020 (DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.611956); De Giorgi R et al., Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2023 (DOI 10.3390/jcm12072590).

How does art help when words fail?

Tauma encoding bypasses the language centres of the brain. During traumatic recall, the area where speech is produced can deactivate. Artmaking allows the experience to be processed visually and tactilely, which aligns with the way trauma is stored.

A 2023 study in The Arts in Psychotherapy worked with military service members using mask-making to externalise what they called their invisible wounds. Brain imaging showed increased functional connectivity between sensory processing and emotional regulation centres. The trauma had not changed, but the brain’s access to it did.

Colour does some of this work too. In the Emotional Spectrum, the second instalment of this series, I wrote about the way warm and cool palettes prime physiological responses before the conscious mind has named what it is looking at. The trauma research adds an underline to that point. When the verbal pathway is partially closed, colour and form can carry what speech cannot.

The Trauma-Focused Art Therapy trial is testing a ten-week intervention in the Netherlands; pilot data suggests a moderate to large effect on PTSD symptom reduction, with primary outcomes expected late 2026. For people who cannot find the words, art is not an alternative to therapy. For some, it is the only therapy that reaches what it is that they need to heal.

Claim: Art therapy in clinical settings produces increased functional connectivity between sensory processing and emotional regulation regions of the brain, particularly in trauma populations where verbal access is impaired.
Sources: Walker MS et al., The Arts in Psychotherapy, 2023; ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05593302 (TFAT, ongoing, primary outcome expected late 2026).

What changes when you live with original art at home?

Gallery visits give what researchers call an aesthetic spike. Living with original art is different. The painting becomes part of the room’s daily rhythm, and the cumulative effect over weeks and months tracks measurable positive mental health metrics.

A growing body of peer-reviewed research links blue-green colour environments with measurable reductions in physiological stress. A 2025 study published in Work found that office spaces integrating biophilic design, including natural tones and greenery, were associated with significantly lower employee stress scores and greater emotional stability compared to conventional settings. These findings align with controlled laboratory evidence showing that cool-toned, blue-green colour schemes activate the parasympathetic nervous system and are associated with reduced cortisol. Integrating these colours into your home or workspace with original abstract artworks is a stylish and nuanced way to enjoy these physical and mental benefits.

The UK Government has begun to take this evidence seriously. The Creative Industries Council Health and Wellbeing Forum Report, published on 19 September 2025, explicitly argues that creative health, including both artmaking and art viewing, must be a critical pillar of the next decade in the NHS strategy. The report cites evidence that group art viewing, where people share their responses with each other, produces stronger gains in social connectedness and wellbeing than viewing in silence.

If you are bringing original work into your home, you are not buying a focal point. You are choosing a daily stimulus for your own nervous system. The brain experiences it repetitively and presents evidence of something physiological accrues from that meeting.

Claim: Aesthetic environments produce sustained reductions in physiological stress markers; living with original abstract art correlates with higher psychological wellbeing scores over a two-year period.
Sources: Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2026, “The role of color psychology in alleviating workplace stress”; Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2024, longitudinal residential study; Creative Industries Council Health and Wellbeing Forum Report, 19 September 2025.

Where this leaves the canvas, and the person standing in front of it

The gap between art and medicine has been narrower than we previously thought, because the brain has been treating it as medicine all along. Science is now publishing this for public consumption. My role is to keep making the work so that you can enjoy all that it has to offer.

Living with original art is as much a tool for wellbeing as it is an object of luxury. On present evidence, it sits alongside walking, quality sleep and emotional connection as a part of the core factors that quietly hold a life together. The most active piece in any room is usually the one that asks the most of the viewer, and gives them the most space to answer.

If you would like to see the original abstract paintings I am currently working on, you can browse the lyrical abstraction collection on the website. If you are thinking about a commission, you are welcome to write to me directly.

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Mini FAQ on art as medicine

Does abstract art reduce stress more than representational art?

Evidence supports the broader finding that aesthetic engagement reduces stress regardless of style. Abstract art may produce deeper self-referential engagement, but a direct head-to-head clinical comparison has not yet been published.

Is art therapy different from looking at art?

Yes. Art therapy is a clinical practice involving artmaking, particularly effective for trauma populations because it bypasses the linguistic bottleneck created when the language centre in the brain deactivates during traumatic recall. Looking at art and making art are related, but distinct interventions.