Stanford Center on Longevity
Rx Creativity for Health, Life (and Fun) October 9, 2025
By Laura M. Holson
There is a story Susan Magsamen likes to tell that illustrates how creativity resides within all of us. Magsamen is executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a research initiative that studies how the brain and body respond to art and aesthetics. Not long ago, she was interviewed by a man who seemed to have little awareness of his artistic nature. “I’m not good at it, so I don’t do it,” he told her.
Magsamen often hears this in her line of work. But as a neurology professor who studies neuroaesthetics, a field that assesses art’s impact on well-being, health and society, she knows that creative expression is vital to a happier, longer life. A World Health Organization report published in 2019 looked at more than 900 publications and found that singing, dancing and photography can help prevent the onset of mental illness and age-related physical decline. Studies show that listening to music can alleviate anxiety and pain in cancer patients and may help foster resilience among people who suffer from trauma. One found that people who regularly went to museums, concerts or similar activities were likely to live longer.
Still, skeptics abound. Magsamen asked the man if he liked to cook. “Yeah, I love food,” he replied. He loved walking in nature, too, and listening to music. And he became almost giddy when she asked him to jump up and down and move his arms and legs. That’s dancing, she told him. “You’re doing art all the time.”
Neuroscientists say the brain remains capable of adapting well into old age. Some artists have been known to create iconic work as they approach the end of their lives, dubbed a “swan song effect.” Giuseppe Verdi and Claude Monet did their most acclaimed work in the last decade of life. David Bowie’s Blackstar album, released days before his death in 2016, won five Grammy Awards.
So why does interest in creative expression ebb for many young people, only to reawaken for some in later life? People can realize the benefits of creative activity without writing a grand opera or painting gossamer water lilies. The challenge is to maintain the artistic impulse that fueled us as children throughout life.
Creative Expression as Medicine
Child’s play is good for the brain. Children make connections through storytelling and exploration, activities Magsamen says are essential to “create strong neural pathways for brain development.” Singing, for example, activates the vagus nerve, a key component of the parasympathetic nervous system that carries signals between the brain, heart, lungs and digestive system. Dancing strengthens cardiovascular and neuromuscular systems. Magsamen, like many researchers who study creativity and health, notes that creative expression is necessary, not a peripheral act. “It’s a pillar, like sleep or good nutrition or exercise,” says Magsamen, co-author of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us.
But somewhere around third grade, children become aware of how they are perceived in social settings. If their creativity is not nurtured, Magsamen says, adolescent exploration is suppressed and children can exhibit a desire to conform. Confidence drops and that inhibits playful curiosity. Further, Magsamen says creative interests can take a backseat during transitional times in people’s lives such as starting college or a career, marriage, parenthood or caring for aging parents. A Drexel University study found that 45 minutes spent creating with collage materials, clay or markers dramatically lowered cortisol — the stress hormone—in 75 percent of adult participants. “You end up putting aside those things that have given you pleasure because they’re now seen as a ‘nice to have,’ not a ‘have to have,’” she says.
Elevating Mood and Countering Loneliness
Art as medicine has shown particular promise for people with neurological disorders. A 2021 research review published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Reports showed that dementia patients had a better quality of life when engaged in art therapy. Shabnam Piryaei’s father was diagnosed with dementia last year at the age of 72. Piryaei, a poet and associate professor at San Francisco State University, was initially overwhelmed by duty and fatigue, unprepared for the hours spent managing her father’s care. He lived alone and struggled with bouts of forgetfulness and melancholy. Piryaei worried he was depressed.
One day last spring, she brought paper and pencils to his home and explained they would draw part of a figure on paper, pass it to the next person and, when finished, examine their combined work. The activity, shared with her son, was a reprieve from the heaviness of other days. So much so, Piryaei incorporated creative play in other visits — tossing cards in a hat, crumpling paper balls for tabletop bowling. As these activities became more regular, she noticed her father became more engaged. “He’s way more present,” she says. Moreover, it gave them an opportunity to discuss his dementia with grace, Piryaei says, to “look at the thing that’s maybe scary, with a kind of levity, for now at least.”
Renée Fleming, one of the most celebrated opera singers of her generation, spearheaded a collaboration with the National Institutes of Health in 2017, to explore how music impacts physical and mental health. As part of her advocacy, she held talks around the country, including at Stanford, with scientists, artists and policymakers, and recently edited a collection of essays, Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness.
Creative expression can also help forge stronger social connections and prevent loneliness, which is known to increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes and depression. Research shows that young people between the ages of 18 and 28 are more likely to experience social disconnectedness and loneliness than older adults. To address the issue, Jeremy Nobel, founder of the Foundation for Art & Healing and author of Project Unlonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection, created Campus UnLonely, a series of student workshops offered at more than 70 colleges and universities.
One workshop participant, Jackson Gieger, 24, spent his freshman year taking online classes after the coronavirus pandemic thwarted his move to Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. When he arrived on campus as a sophomore in 2021, it was hard to break into already established cliques. So in 2023, he became a facilitator for “Campus Colors & Connection” workshops. Students pick colors that describe their feelings — nervous, excited, scared — then make a sketch using bright crayons. Conversations are steered to discussing sketches, colors and the feelings they represent, making it easier for students to acknowledge emotions they might otherwise be reluctant to discuss. “Helping them feel like they belong is a key component,” Gieger says of the exercise.
The Midlife Renaissance
For some people, creativity emerges in midlife as an antidote for what is lacking. “The arts are the most potent form of personalized medicine because you know exactly what you need,” Magsamen says. “For me, it might be collaging. For you, it might be journaling. We know what we’re drawn to.”
For Sue Fleishman, it was romance writing. Although Fleishman had excelled as a communications executive at some of Hollywood’s most prestigious studios, in 2023, at 63, she began to reevaluate her life. Fleishman’s chosen industry worshiped fame and youth, and she felt overlooked. “I’m somewhat of a control freak and I chose a profession where I had absolutely no control,” she says. The cognitive dissonance left her frustrated. What she wanted most was the freedom to rewrite her story.
Fleishman enrolled in a romance writing seminar and, in 2024, published her first novel about a public relations powerhouse who falls in love with a charismatic true crime writer she meets at a yoga retreat in Italy. At first, writing (under a pen name) was a lark as she mined her Hollywood career for guffaws. But as she continued to write, her mood shifted. She was less stressed. Her frustration gave way to joy. Writing became a path to healing. “It’s even deeper than therapy because you’re working something out, but you’re able to do it through characters,” Fleishman says. “You get to make the outcome the way you want it to be.” She adds, “That’s very therapeutic and freeing.”
Others reclaim creativity by returning to the fertile ground they mined as children. Nina Katz gave up creative pastimes when she went to Boston University to study nursing, while her twin sister became an artist . After a number of life changes — a career switch, two cross-country moves and a radical haircut — Katz longed to paint again. “It was something inside of me that I just felt I had to get back to,” she says.
Katz was then 35. She took painting classes at the San Francisco Art Institute while working in human resources in Silicon Valley. Over time, her interest developed into expertise. Painting boosted her confidence and resilience. Now 70, Katz paints full time and her work is featured in a San Francisco gallery.
“Some people tell me when they’re painting, ‘Oh. I’m afraid to do this,’” Katz says. “And I go, ‘Afraid of what? Who are you afraid of? What’s going to happen if you take a brush that’s three inches wide and make a stroke?’”
You can wipe it away and start over, she says, with the confidence that comes from years of creative play and self-license.
As these creators have learned, it is never too late to embrace your inner artist. As well as making life more interesting, it’s good for your health.
For more on creativity in different areas of life and work, check out “How to Start Your Creative Engine” from the Stanford Report.
jack fischer gallery
Nina Katz
figures + fragments
September 13 – November 18, 2025
Opening reception: Saturday, September 13, 5 – 7 p.m.
Minnesota Street Project
1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
Jack Fischer Gallery is pleased to present figures + fragments, a series of recent paintings by Berkeley based artist Nina Katz. Join us for the opening reception on September 13, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at our gallery in Minnesota Street Project. The exhibition will be up through November 18, 2025.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve been searching for a new kind of dialogue with my paintings—one without a clear destination. I moved between representation to and figurative abstraction, following instinct into unfamiliar terrain. In that process, I returned to older paintings that no longer spoke to me, stripping them down to their foundations. From those raw, scraped surfaces, I listened for what might emerge—and what came through were the two paintings, My Bleeding Heart and Substrate, vivid bursts of floral energy that meld abstraction with impressionistic renderings. These works ignited an interest in flowers—not just as subjects from life or photographs, but as emotional forms springing from imagination. That momentum carried me to Gravity’s Gesture, a painting shaped by the tension between the living, the dying, and the unreal.
A similar energy took hold during a month-long residency in France earlier this year, where in just a few weeks, I created five large figurative works, driven by the magnetic pull of the people and the place. Without goals or expectations, I explored the dynamics between myself and my female subjects, allowing paint and imagination to lead the way. Each painting started with a thin layer of poured neon acrylic, a technique I used earlier in the diptych “Waiting” which is all acrylic, but this time I used oil for the remainder of the painting, leaving various remnants of the neon in unexpected places.
My work continues to resist categorization. It shifts, evolves, and refuses to settle into a tidy theme or style. I try not to chase what’s expected or popular; instead, I follow the work itself—its moods, its materials, its surprises. I still love to do commissioned portraits as well as revisit unfamiliar topics. This path is not always comfortable, but it is the only honest one I know. I trust the paint and I’m fueled, always, by a little angst—and maybe the occasional nudge from the goddess of creativity.
jack fischer gallery
Nina Katz
larger than life
February 22 – March 28, 2020
Opening reception: Saturday, March 7, 5 – 7 p.m.
Minnesota Street Project
1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
Jack Fischer Gallery is pleased to present larger than life, a series of portraits of transgender people by Berkeley based artist Nina Katz. Join us for the opening reception on March 7, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at our gallery in Minnesota Street Project. The exhibition will be up through March 28, 2020.
“I am an artist and I am a mother of a transgender child. While deeply committed to both endeavors, I have largely kept the two paths separate. I am openly active and supportive in the Trans community, but my particular and complex journey with my child is a part of my private life, and not my artistic one.
A year ago, the New York Times reported on a memo circulating within the federal government that aimed to strip transgender people from some of their civil rights. It was then that I felt even after years of advocating for my child, the activism I was participating in wasn’t enough. I had to use my art to make a stand.
larger than life is an exhibition of portraits. At sixty-five inches tall and forty-five inches wide, the canvases are almost one and a half times larger than life. The backgrounds are single colored planes of pinks or blues or yellows and the overall palette is vibrant. The subject of each portrait gazes directly at the viewer and they range in age from thirteen to sixty-three. They identify as female, male, gender non-conforming and gender fluid. Their backgrounds are Asian, African American, Latinex and white. There are nine paintings, each oil on wood panel.
The process of each painting begins with a conversation with the subject. I record that conversation, a kind of interview, to capture the subjects’s story in their own words and in their own voice. Afterwards, I photograph them in a place where they feel comfortable, in an outfit they’ve picked out. I paint from the photographs as well as drawing from our conversation to give me a vision of the whole person. While it was important to achieve a strong likeness, I took liberties with the boldness of the palate and in some cases altering the pose.
I painted these portraits out of a desire to support and to share my love for the Trans people in my life and in my community. I also wanted the subjects of these portraits to be more than subjects: I wanted to honor how they see themselves, and to honor how they would like others to see them. As the paintings developed, it became clear to me that audio from each subject’s interview ought to be included in the presentation. Each portrait is paired with an audio clip of the subject discussing aspects of their journey and expressing what it means to them to be trans.
My hope is that these paintings demonstrate the beauty and courage of trans people, that they won’t be silenced, and that they cannot be erased. I want to celebrate them. I want them painted permanently into our society, larger than life and on their own terms.” - Nina Katz
Jack Fischer Gallery Minnesota Street Project 1275 Minnesota Street San Francisco, CA 94107 +1 (415) 522 – 1178
Tues. - Sat. 11:00 - 5:30 p.m. & by appointment *First Saturdays open until 8:00 p.m.
jackfischergallery.com / jackfischer@sbcglobal.net
DZINE GALERY #PORTRAIT SHOW JULY 5, 2016
https://dzineliving.com/artist-interview-nina-katz/
ARTIST INTERVIEW: NINA KATZ
“The portrait serves not so much to provide the answers to questions, but provides the questions themselves, and points to the importance of asking them.” – Nina Katz
Nina Katz is a local Bay Area artist whose work is largely concerned with the figure and portraits. She was born in Brooklyn, NY and spent her formative years in Hong Kong before attending college in Boston and eventually moving to the Bay Area. She is primarily self-taught and has dedicated herself to painting full time for the past 15 years. For our #portrait exhibition, Katz presents a series of paintings on canvas including Queen V, which was named a semi-finalist for the 2016 BP Portrait Award.
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR PROCESS AS A PAINTER?
I spend time with my subjects photographing, taking notes, sketching and just noticing. Back in the studio I’ll do several drawings before I start painting. The drawing phase is probably the most important part of the process as it allows me to get closer to my subject. It’s like what I would imagine a blind person might do by using their fingers to feel every curve and dent in a person’s face to “see them.” When I start on the painting it’s a matter of drawing with the paint; layering and scraping and moving the paint around until I feel the essence of the person.
When not painting direct portraits, but figurative and landscapes, the technical process is the same. I still look for a feeling or emotional sense of the place or figure to come alive in the process.
YOU’VE SAID THAT YOU DO NOT PAINT DIRECTLY, BUT “AROUND” YOUR SUBJECTS – CAN YOU ELABORATE ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY THIS?
To me an eye is not an eye, or a nose a nose. I paint in broad strokes, the darks and lights defining shape as I gradually close in on what I feel and see is the person or subject before me. I continue to add and scrape away paint until the subject emerges. A likeness or recognition of the person comes from subtle expressions unique to that person – the wrinkle around their eyes or edge of the mouth, for example. I move the paint around until it gets there, rather than draw or fill it in precisely.
YOU WERE RECENTLY NAMED A SEMIFINALIST FOR THE BP PORTRAIT AWARD BY THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY IN LONDON FOR YOUR QUEEN V PAINTING – A HUGE HONOR! WHAT IS THE BACKGROUND BEHIND THIS WORK? WHAT INFLUENCED THIS PAINTING?
It is a huge honor and I am so grateful. Queen V is part of an ongoing series of portraits of people I know, primarily in the world of artists, writers and creators, and started at a time when my style of more loosely painted portraits was emerging.
Queen V is a portrait of Vivienne Flesher, an artist and illustrator for The New York Times, amongst many other reputable publications. I spent hours looking at her own illustrative work and used her sense of color. She is a very strong, beautiful person with an understated sense of humor behind a very regal poise. Once I saw this stately, commanding personality staring back at me the title Queen V felt apt.
People. Their lives, struggles, motivations. I am intrigued by the hero, the criminal, the innocent and the victim. A sense of wonder about who they are beyond what is on the surface. My challenge is to use the paint in a way that gets at that. I am inspired when I find a painting that can truly surprise me and keep me fixated on the image, even when I can’t put into words what draws me in.
BROKEASSSTUART.COM BLOG OCTOBER 16, 2015
https://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2015/.../artists-you-should-visit-at-open-studios-wknd-...
ARTISTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS AT OPEN STUDIOS WKND 1
NINA KATZ (2 ARTSPAN JUROR SELECTIONS)
Nina Katz is a self-taught artist who was born in the projects of Brooklyn. As a child, her family moved to Hong Kong, where she spent her formative years. Katz eventually moved back to the states and obtained a degree in nursing but then tried a career change working for a tech start up in Silicon Valley. About 20 years ago, Katz decided to start painting seriously and is now a full time artist creating paintings in her Berkeley home.
This weekend, Katz will be exhibiting, “A Year of Portraits From the New York Times Obituaries.” It is one of Katz’s early projects that unintentionally came into fruition. “I always read the obituaries because I love reading about people’s lives, wonderful and tragic as it is, said Katz. “And when I started that project, I was looking for a daily drawing practice. I wanted to do one thing every day.” Katz’s intent was to see how her daily drawing practice of a similar subject would impact her drawing skills over time. Her initial commitment to the obituaries was only for a couple of months in order to hone her skills, but the project eventually blossomed into a full year committed practice that resulted in 365 sketched portraits in 12 Moleskine books.