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When I first started learning to paint, it was because I was burnt out on programming and technical writing. I wanted to learn something completely different, something that involved working with the physical world. In 2019, I started drawing daily, took painting lessons, and helped to run an art gallery. The experience got me thinking about and researching the creative brain benefits from painting—and how switching perspectives and creative endeavors reshape the mind.
Abstract painting titled “Pequod” (2021) by Chris Minnick, representing brain flexibility through art.
Transitioning from Code to Paint
I got involved with painting and an art gallery as a break from the boredom of computer programming and technical writing. When the COVID pandemic hit, my technical writing and programming work dried up when the COVID pandemic happened, and I took that as an opportunity to immerse myself completely in the art gallery.
Over the next couple of years, I learned a lot about painting and about the work of professional artists. I’ll forever be grateful to the artists who taught me and who trusted me to help them market and sell their work. What I didn’t expect to happen was that I also gained a new appreciation and a remarkably improved ability to code and write technical manuscripts.
In hindsight, I now see all the similarities between the world of a painter and that of a technical writer and computer programmer. In particular, the ways programmers, writers, and painters approach planning, problem solving, and gaining mastery of their crafts are strikingly similar. This realization set the stage for deeper insights into how planning and intuition, changing perspectives, and dedicated practice play pivotal roles in all three disciplines.
One of the most surprising creative brain benefits from painting was how it strengthened my ability to think through complex code. I started noticing patterns more easily and became more comfortable navigating ambiguity—something I used to avoid.
Planning vs. Intuition
A realist painter starts with an idea for what they want to paint and a plan for how to paint it and then applies layers of paint to achieve the desired result. In writing, this type of writer is known as a “plotter.” In programming, this is known as a “planner” or “architect.” Careful plans are often successful, but they just as often lead to boring or predictable outcomes.
An abstract painter starts with just an idea and then iterates until a desired result emerges. An author who starts with nothing more than an idea is known as a “pantser.” In programming, this is known as a “hacker” or, more recently, a “vibe coder.” Relying on intuition can lead to unexpected brilliance or tangled messes.
Changing Perspective
If you want to be any good at painting, you must learn to see the world very differently from how non-painters see it. A shape isn’t a shape, it’s a gradation of colors. The shadows and reflections are what gives a painting realism and the appearance of depth. One of the hardest lessons for me to learn was to pay just as much attention to the space between objects in a still life painting as to the subject.
In traditional programming methodologies, programmers often overlook or delay the process of writing tests until their code is working correctly. Test-driven development (TDD) is a methodology that flips traditional ideas about testing on their head. In TDD, coders don’t write a line of code until they’ve first written a test. TDD has been shown to result in cleaner code with fewer errors than testing after the fact.
Mastery Takes a Lot of Sitting
In all three crafts, the key to improving your work is to have patience and dedication. There’s no quick and easy way to become a good painter, writer, or programmer other than to dedicate a lot of time to it. Painters, writers, and programmers all suffer from the same types of damage to their wrists, backs, and social lives.
From Brushstrokes Back to the Keyboard
Once COVID had ended, I began to be in demand again as a writer, programmer and teacher. Although the work hadn’t changed, I felt energized beyond just the motivation I felt to pay off all the massive new debts I had from my foray into painting and the art gallery. I felt smarter, and like I had a whole new set of tools to work with.
It turns out that that there is science to back up my belief that painting made me better at programming. Exploring different perspectives causes your brain to form new paths. Furthermore, the more often you look at things from different perspectives, the better you get at it — in scientific terms, this is called neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity.
Artistic Expression and Brain Plasticity
Engaging in art measurably changes the brain. Creative tasks recruit complex, interconnected brain networks rather than isolated regions. For example, scientists found that individuals with high creative ability show increased expression of genes related to synaptic plasticity, meaning their brains more readily form and reorganize neural connections. The act of generating original ideas appears linked to the brain’s capacity to rewire itself at the cellular level. This helps explain why the creative brain benefits from painting aren’t just anecdotal—they’re rooted in how the brain physically adapts to new creative challenges.
Practicing visual arts can lead to structural brain changes over time. One study of adult art students documented modifications in white matter after months of art training, which correlated with increased creative output. Similarly, brain scans reveal that artists develop more gray matter volume (gray matter is the part of the brain that does information processing) in regions governing fine motor control and visual imagery – likely a result of honing skills like drawing and painting. In other words, learning to paint literally “sculpts” the brain: long-term art training consolidates neural circuits in the visual and motor areas, a clear sign of learning-induced neuroplasticity. These changes aren’t confined to one side of the brain. Creativity isn’t just a “right-brain” endeavor; it engages widespread regions and both hemispheres, using more of our gray and white matter than once thought.
Creativity, Perspective-Shifting, and Cognitive Flexibility
A key cognitive ingredient in creativity is cognitive flexibility – the capacity to shift perspective or switch between different modes of thought. Creative thinking is actually a complex interplay of mental processes like flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control. Many of the creative brain benefits from painting come from building this habit of mental flexibility—learning to shift gears and embrace new ways of thinking. By shifting perspectives in a painting or art project – for instance, experimenting with a new style or interpreting an image in multiple ways – we exercise this mental flexibility. Neuroscience research indicates that creative brains fluidly activate multiple core networks: the imaginative Default Mode Network (for spontaneous ideas), the Central Executive Network (for focused problem-solving), and a Salience Network that toggles between the two. This dynamic network-switching is essentially the brain “shifting gears” or perspectives on demand.
- Whole-Brain Engagement: Creativity draws on a broad neural canvas. While painting an image or devising a story, the brain co-activates regions for memory, vision, motion, and reasoning. It recruits the medial prefrontal cortex and other frontal lobe areas crucial for idea generation and problem-solving, as well as deeper emotional centers (like the amygdala) that imbue meaning. This whole-brain activation is why creative endeavors can feel so mentally immersive, and it fosters connections among disparate brain areas.
- Flexibility and “Outside-the-Box” Thinking: Studies confirm that engaging in the arts boosts our ability to think divergently – to imagine multiple solutions to a problem. Creativity training emphasizes exploring many possibilities, which strengthens mental agility. In fact, one experiment found that students with intensive design training significantly outperformed others in divergent thinking tests, coming up with more original uses for everyday objects. This flexibility in thinking is exactly the kind of perspective-shifting that fuels creative problem-solving. (Notably, the same study saw no advantage in convergent thinking – the process of narrowing down to one correct answer – highlighting that creativity mainly boosts idea generation.)
- Empathy and Open-Mindedness: Immersing in art can also expand our social and emotional perspective. Creative activities have been shown to increase empathy and tolerance for ambiguity. For example, interpreting a painting’s story or a character’s emotions in a novel teaches us to consider different viewpoints. This habit of mind – entertaining diverse perspectives – translates into more open-minded problem-solving in any context. We become more comfortable with complexity and less locked into a single “right” approach.
By practicing these habits in an artistic context, we effectively train the brain to be more adaptable. Shifting perspective becomes second-nature – whether that means finding a new angle on a canvas or on a thorny analytical problem.
From Easel to Algorithms: Cross-Domain Benefits
Does this creative brain boost carry over into technical and analytical fields like programming? Research suggests yes. The cognitive skills strengthened by arts engagement – such as flexibility, inventiveness, and integrative thinking – are equally valuable when writing code or devising scientific solutions. Divergent thinking, for instance, is a prized asset in software development: a creative programmer will generate multiple potential algorithms or fixes and then refine the best one. The art-trained students’ edge in idea generation is precisely the kind of advantage that can lead to more innovative approaches in engineering or tech. Many complex coding challenges benefit from an “artistic” mindset, where one is willing to look at the problem from different angles and brainstorm unorthodox solutions instead of sticking to one linear method.
Moreover, art education seems to bolster general problem-solving abilities. Surveys in schools have repeatedly found that integrating arts into the curriculum correlates with better problem-solving skills and creative thinking across subjects. In these programs, students not only become more creative in their art projects but also show improved critical thinking in science and math classes, suggesting a transfer of skills. They learn to approach challenges with open-minded curiosity – a trait just as useful for debugging code or analyzing data as it is for painting a portrait.
Beyond formal studies, even anecdotal evidence from professional domains highlights this transfer. Law enforcement agencies and medical schools have employed fine art observation training to sharpen analytical acumen in their practitioners. By carefully examining paintings for details and underlying meanings, trainees learn to notice patterns and subtleties – a practice that translates into keener observation and problem-solving in crime scenes or diagnostic exams. As art historian Amy Herman puts it, “Art provides a safe space outside of ourselves to analyze our observations and convert those details into actionable knowledge.”
Engaging in artistic hobbies may even keep our brains healthier and more adaptable in the long run, which indirectly benefits all types of thinking. A study in the journal Neurology tracked older adults over several years and found that those who engaged in artistic hobbies like painting, sculpting, or drawing in mid- and late life were up to 73% less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment (a precursor to dementia) than those who did not. Creative pursuits appeared to preserve memory and thinking skills, likely by continually challenging the brain and spurring new neural connections.
Weaving Creativity into Analytical Thinking
Scientific findings increasingly affirm that creative and analytical thinking are not opposites, but partners. Activities like painting, music, or writing can prime our brains for innovation by strengthening neural networks and cognitive strategies that apply to many endeavors. When we shift perspectives through art – experimenting, imagining, empathizing – we are effectively cross-training the mind. The result is a brain that not only paints richer pictures on the canvas, but also writes better code, devises smarter experiments, and navigates everyday problems with agility and originality.
References
1. Barnett, K.S., & Vasiu, F. (2024). How the arts heal: a review of the neural mechanisms behind the therapeutic effects of creative arts on mental and physical health. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 11480958. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11480958/).
2. Orwig, W. et al. (2021). Cortical networks of creative ability trace gene expression profiles of synaptic plasticity in the human brain. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15, 694274. (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.694274/full).
3. Hong, T.-Y. et al. (2023). Enhanced intrinsic functional connectivity in the visual system of visual artists: implications for creativity. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 17, 1114771. (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1114771/full).
4. Chamberlain, R. et al. (2014). Drawing on the right side of the brain: A voxel-based morphometry analysis of observational drawing. NeuroImage, 96, 167-173. (https://hyperallergic.com/121113/research-reveals-artists-brains-may-be-structured-differently/).
5. Xia, T. et al. (2021). Design training and creativity: Students develop stronger divergent but not convergent thinking. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 695002. (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.695002/full).
6. Firger, J. (2015). Which hobbies help an aging brain? Neurology (reported by CBS News). (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/which-hobbies-help-an-aging-brain).
7. Oddleifson, E. & Simpson, J. (cited in 2022). Fine arts programs are beneficial to students’ learning. Art Education Studies. (https://artbusinessnews.com/2022/06/creative-arts-develop-problem-solving-skills/).
8. Herman, A. (2022). Fixed. How to Perfect the Fine Art of Problem Solving. (As reported by Quartz/WEF). (https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/02/art-skills-better-problem-solve-productivity-creativity/).
