Tag: neuroplasticity

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Creative vacations

Heavy Weather (Ketch Angelique), 24X36, oil on canvas, framed, $3985 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

The 4th of July kicks off vacation season here in Maine. Right on schedule, Bloomberg tells us, Taking Predictable Vacations Is Bad for Your Brain. (A writer replies, “Tell me you don’t have kids without telling me,” but I beg to disagree. I’ve taken many unusual vacations with my kids and grandkids; they seem to thrive on them.)

Maine is a great place to avoid the predictable. I had my most hair-raising experience as a parent on the beach in Ogunquit, so I speak from experience in saying it’s not exactly like the Jersey Shore up here.

Of course, I’m not suggesting you risk your kids’ lives. Unpredictable can mean a lot of things. Maine is no shopping destination, but it sure is great for hiking, biking, kayaking, and sailing.

Surf’s Up is 12X16, on a prepared birch surface. $1159 includes shipping and handling in the Continental US.

Why do creative vacations matter?

Our ancestors had way too much instability in their lives, which is why we suppose vacations should be relaxing—we’ve been told they’re for rest and regeneration. We humans are hardwired for exploration and challenge, but modern man is stuck in a rut.

Highly predictable vacations allow our brains to languish (and, I’ll add, we tend to drink too much on them). Experiences outside our comfort zone stimulate thought, but they also kick in a healthy physiological response.

Dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and motivation, is released when we are challenged. Predictable vacations may not trigger the same level of dopamine release as novel experiences, according to St. Luke’s Penn Foundation.

When an activity is a bit off-kilter or outré, we perversely enjoy it more. When we stick to the tried-and-true, our brains don’t receive the same stimulation and challenge as they do when we’re surprised. New experiences increase our neuroplasticity. That’s great for cognitive function and resilience.

Skylarking II, 18×24, oil on linen, $1855, includes shipping in the continental US.

I’m not advocating killing yourself by taking foolish risks, as too many young influencers seem to do these days. But there are other options to take us out of our comfort zones.

Regular readers know I like to take go rambling in the British style, where you go from inn to pub to inn on foot. It’s certainly not because I love blisters, heat exhaustion, or dehydration, but as soon as I’m done with one year’s adventure, I’m eagerly thinking about the next (which I think will be in the Orkneys). Equally, some of my best trips have been madcap drives, including a memorable 10,000 mile painting excursion across Alaska and Canada. I find these things so much more interesting than Orlando.

High Surf, 12X16, oil on prepared birch painting surface, $1159 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A painting workshop is the ultimate in creative vacations

I start teaching an advanced plein air painting workshop on Monday here in Rockport, and I have three others on my calendar for the summer. A plein air workshop is a great way to push yourself outside your comfort zone. And painting has an additional benefit, because many studies have shown it’s great in itself for neural health.

Research shows that hobbies—any hobbies—prevent depression and reduce anxiety. But the most effective hobbies are the creative hobbies, according to The Journal of Positive Psychology. Creativity has a positive effect, not only on the day when we make stuff, but on subsequent days as well. (For anyone waiting around for inspiration, the same research tells us that feeling good doesn’t push us into greater creative effort.)

If you’re looking to get the biggest restorative bang for your buck from a creative vacation, you can’t do better than a painting workshop.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Think with your hands

Think with your hands. 5X8, graphite on pencil in my sketchbook.

“I think with my hands, and it really cements my thoughts,” Theresa Vincent emailed me recently. She has a way with words; she’s the same person who told me a painting needs brides and bridesmaids.

I may be the only person in my church who draws, but I’m not alone in fussing while listening. There are occasionally people who knit, and lots of people who take notes. Whether they look back at them or not, writing notes results in better retention. More words are better than fewer, and writing by hand is better than tapping out notes in a phone or laptop.

Most importantly for us, drawing instead of writing results in even better memory retention. It doesn’t matter if what we’re drawing is ‘relevant’ or whether the pictures are objectively good.

Drawing in church. 5X8, graphite on pencil in my sketchbook.

Take that, every teacher who disciplined a student for drawing in class! I sure had those teachers; they made school a misery for me. Fifty years later, I realize I was a deeply-traumatized kid who needed help, but that wasn’t happening back in the 1970s. All I had was my pencil, and school had no room for free thinkers.

Fast forward to the aughts, when my own kids were in school. You’d think it would have been better after thirty years of child psychology, but school then was even more rigid and more disciplined. I knew several kids who were disciplined for drawing in class, including my own.

Drawing in church. 5X8, graphite on pencil in my sketchbook.

How does drawing help us remember?

Nobody knows precisely how this works, but it probably means that our moving hands help create new neural pathways to encode long-term memory. The brain-even the elderly one-continues to grow and mend itself. Even after great damage, like stroke or head injury, our brains make new neural pathways and alter existing ones. That’s how we adapt to new experiences and learn new information.

C. is a student in my Zoom brushwork class. She is 83 years old. The foolish might read that and think she’s an old lady taking art classes down at the senior center. They’d be all wrong. C. is a very serious painter, an excellent draftsman, and completely open to new ideas. Last week, I had my class do a small-brush exercise in the style of Les Nabis. It is difficult to give up the brushes you know and love, but C. embraced the challenge. And she crushed it.

Drawing in church. 5X8, graphite on pencil in my sketchbook.

Obviously, it’s not drawing alone that keeps C. youthful. She sails, she travels, and she has good genes. But art has a big place in her life.

Our brains are not the only way we think. We have a complicated autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system activates our fight-or-flight response; the parasympathetic nervous system restores us to calm. Our enteric nervous system, which controls our gut (and thus our ‘gut responses’) can operate independently of our brains. And the cool thing is, we’re just beginning to understand how these systems all work together.

I’d almost bet I drew this at Christmas. 5X8, graphite on pencil in my sketchbook.

But they do, so it’s not unreasonable for Theresa to say she thinks with her hands. It might be quite literally true.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters