Not that long ago I was on a very popular art website that promoted calming art for health and healing. Get this—misshapen and horrifically disfigured images, open human legs and rolls of fat, abstracts of daggers and dripping blood—all amazing works in their categories—just nothing I would deem appropriate for the elimination of stress or the recovery of human health.
This set me on a course for knowledge to find out if I could actually learn to design/create art with your health and healing in mind. I found The Center For Health Design with its excellent EDAC (Evidence-based Design) courses and certification. Picture thousands of doctors, hospital administrators, health facility architects, hospital room designers, and more around the world basing their creative/artistic decisions and designs on actual medical studies.
Instead of some untrained art critic or consultant setting the standards for art for health and healing, I now had real medical professionals to learn from and follow. It was the hardest exam I ever took (and I’m a university grad with high grades), but the knowledge I gained—and now incorporate into my designs—was absolutely worth all the hard work.
It’s amazing how many people who visit my viewing gallery along the Great Lakes or who buy my evidence-based designs make it a point to tell me how this “evidence-based” art actually shifts their moods and creates in them positive and uplifting feelings/states of mind. I love it when our world changes for the better!