Why many Artists love to paint waters
Why many artists love to paint waters? And why being close to water whether oceans, seas, fountains or lakes has irresistible and tranquility effect on our minds? Why we all are inspired by water, whether when hearing it, smelling it, playing in it, walking next to it, surfing, swimming or fishing, writing about it or photographing it? Doing any of the above creates lasting memories. Being close to water creates feelings of awe, peace, and joy. 70% of the earth is covered with water! Water contains percentage of oxygen and the blue colour adds serene feelings to the mind. As well, the sensation of hearing the waves is relaxing and described to many for healing.
We however, need to look deeper than these reasons. We spend our first nine months of life immersed in the “watery” environment of our mother’s womb. When we’re born, our bodies are approximately 78 percent water. We depend on water as source of life as we depended on our mothers. From there, we build have innate love for nature as we love our mothers. Most likely, we intuitively are linked to water and nature physically, cognitively, and emotionally as we are to our mothers!
Back to artists and painting waters! There is a link between the need to be close to water and being inspired by it with survival! What we consider “beautiful” or beautiful art is a result of our deep-rooted linkage to the kind of natural landscape that confirmed our survival as a species. When people were asked to describe beautiful landscape in contemporary art, the elements were included; open space, threes, blue, grass, water, which are survival elements!
For each one of us, water provides the most profound shortcut to happiness. Being happy, improves our relationships, helps us be creative, productive, and be effective at whatever we do, builds self-control and ability to cope, make us more charitable, cooperative, and empathetic; boost our immune, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems; lower cortisol and heart rate, decrease inflammation, slow disease progression, and increase longevity. Research shows that the amount of happiness we experience spreads outward, affecting not only people we know but also the friends of their friends as well. Happy people demonstrate better cognition and attention, make better decisions, take better care of themselves, and are better friends, colleagues, neighbors, spouses, parents, and citizens. Blue Mind isn’t just about smiling when we’re near the water; it’s about smiling everywhere.
In almost all cases, when humans think of water or hear water, or see water, or get in water, even taste and smell water — they feel something. These “instinctual and emotional responses . . . occur separately from rational and cognitive responses,” wrote Steven C. Bourassa, a professor of urban planning, in a seminal 1990 article in Environment and Behavior. These emotional responses to our environment arise from the oldest parts of our brain, and in fact can occur before any cognitive response arises.
Therefore, to understand our relationship to the environment, we must understand both our cognitive and our emotional interactions with it.
We didn’t come into this world but came out of it, like a wave from the ocean, so we are not strangers! Are we?
Beyond our evolutionary linkage to water, humans have deep emotional ties to being in its presence. Water delights us and inspires us
“I need the sea because it teaches me (Pablo Neruda”)
It consoles us and intimidates us (Vincent van Gogh)
And I could not gree more!
