Note from the author: the word spiritual in this article is nonreligious and mainly serves to explain and emphasize the internal character of art’s effect on the mind. 

Imagine a new house you are about to move into, with no furniture, only the walls, the windows, and the doors. When you step into that space, you will start creating your own cozy masterpiece called home. It will take time, lots of effort, and probably some professional assistance decorating it. Leaving that space blank will keep it as a house, an adult-sized box with multiple holes in the walls that let the light inside. Practical, but not fun! Decorating it turns it into a home, a place to live, dream, and create. 

Life without art is like a house, practical but not fun! The paintings, the architecture, sculptures, interior, and landscape design, calligraphy, literature, cinema, music, ballet, theatre, graphic and fashion design, photography, printmaking, and decorative art. All that adds coziness to life. The history of human civilization would not be so rich and complete without those art forms. As your body needs food to function well and stay healthy, so does your mind, though a different one – a spiritual – with art being part of it.

It’s known that we receive 80 percent of the information with eyes. After it enters our brains, it helps to form our belief system, thoughts, and emotional reactions that govern our life for a certain period. Comparing that to the fact that it takes several dozen milliseconds for information from the eyes to reach the brain, which many researchers have proved, we should pay more attention to the quality of that information.