Art is Medicine
a curated list for the new moon
Welcome to The Practice of Life — a place to slow down, befriend yourself, and connect with the world from kindness and awareness. If you’re arriving for the first time, learn more about me through this introduction.
I publish on the full and new moons. New moon posts are usually curated lists of whatever goodness that has stayed with me in the past month. Recent lists have included The Power of Community and 3 Spiritual and Practical Keys to Make it Through End Times Fascism.
New Moon / March 18, 2026
Art is medicine. Creativity is balm.
In these dark times, deep medicine is needed. This past month, these three shining examples stood out to me —
1. An artist conjures meaning out of devastation
“Bamiyan: A Continuum” by Andra Samelson
In her Three Threads Substack, Katarina Wong offers “an invitation to pause and deepen into the fullness of our human experience with art as our guide.” The “Three Threads” are creativity, spirituality, and social justice.
This recent post featured a stunning work of art by Andra Samelson, a multimedia artist based in New York City. Samelson created “Bamiyan: A Continuum” not long after the Taliban blew up two huge statues depicting the Buddha in the caves of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. These Buddhas had been carved into the sandstone cliff some time between c. 544 - 644 CE, and carried a great deal of historical, cultural, and religious significance. Their destruction, carried out in 2001 only a few months before the Sept 11 attacks on the Twin Towers, felt insurmountable. And yet Samelson took this as an opening to explore something deeper. As she writes,
“I chose to paint a seated Buddha over images of the two colossal Buddha statues that were destroyed to symbolize the state of meditation, serene and indestructible. Despite the destruction of these great statues, the wisdom and power of the Buddha’s teaching have not been diminished.”
Wong’s post on this artwork is wonderful as she gives more of the back story and invites us into a meditation on impermanence, as well as constructs of self and other.
2. Claude Monet’s water lilies
Summer Brennan’s work is frequently lyrical — and heartbreaking. In “The Texture of Wartime Monet,” she mines a vein of suffering at the heart of Claude Monet’s life, and turns it into gold:
“Look and you can see beneath the surface of the water: that dread, that waiting. Would it be destroyed, the garden in Normandy, like so many others? Would it all be dug up? Monet’s water garden, that paradise it took him so long to earn, and to build. But then another wife died, and a son, and a beloved dog. Can’t you see them there, the wives, the son, the dog, the war—in his brushstrokes, in the depths of the water?”
Brennan delves into the story behind Monet’s water lilies, a project he started the year his son died from illness, and continued into the unfolding of World War II. As the French countryside around him was being bombed and friends encouraged him to leave his home and studio in Giverny for his own safety, he refused: “I shall stay here regardless. If those barbarians wish to kill me, I shall die among my canvases, in front of my life’s work.”
As if all that wasn’t enough, Monet was also grieving his wife Alice, who died just three years before, and was going blind.
Knowing this back story gives these works of art even more urgency and poignancy, which Brennan beautifully captures in this essay. The world and our lives can literally be falling apart and yet, perhaps like Monet, we can lean into creativity as our life preserver.
3. Art in unexpected places… Alysa Liu
Finally, I was so moved this past month by watching Alysa Liu’s extraordinary performance at the Winter Olympics, which won her and the U.S. a gold medal.
What made it remarkable was not the technical expertise she displayed, though that was there. It was the backstory of how Alysa retired from professional skating just a few years before, tired of being told how she should move and dress, tired of the competitive foundation of the sport. She needed to be free, she needed to rediscover her own unmediated relationship to skating — and for Alysa, she is absolutely clear that skating is her art form, her way to express herself to the world.
This freedom is what shines through this performance, and it broke my heart open. I’m guessing it may have done the same for you. At a time when we in the United States have so much to be ashamed of, when so many of us wish with all our hearts that we could stop or change the horrific acts our government is committing, to have Alysa Liu embody what is good about this country feels incredibly healing. She skated so beautifully because she was unattached to winning a medal. These moments on the ice were all about transmitting light and joy.
Let’s remember that feeling of complete liberation and pure joy once more and savor Alysa’s artistry:
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Thank you!
You know what strikes me about all three of these examples? They're all acts of devotion. Not to an outcome or an audience, but to the thing itself. Samelson devoted to the indestructible nature of wisdom. Monet devoted to his garden and his vision, even as the world burned. Alysa devoted to the pure experience of movement and expression.
And I think that's what we're all starving for right now. Not more content or productivity or even beauty, necessarily. But devotion. The kind that doesn't ask what it will get in return. The kind that says: this matters to me, so I'm going to tend it with everything I have.
Thank you for this. I needed the reminder that art isn't something we do in addition to living. It's how we stay alive.
Thank you, Maia. Just what my spirit needed.