The Garden of Culture: On Flourishing through the Humanities

Art is not a reflection of reality, it is the reality of a reflection.

- Jean-Luc Godard

Conversations through the Canvas

The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich

A lone wanderer stands atop a cliff. Draped in a dark olive overcoat, he gazes out to the craggy peaks that lie in the distance. A blanket of fog shrouds the mountains. A gentle breeze brushes his hair. The air feels crisp. Standing tall, holding a walking cane in his right hand, the wanderer ponders. Thoughts of the life he has lived. The journey he has taken. The years that lay before him. A moment of contemplation, of his past and his potential. He wonders. What does the life that has yet to be promise him?

The identity of the wanderer is unknown. We never get to see his face. The silent reverie of the lonely landscape evokes a shared sentiment for those who walk with him. Poignant reflections of the life that was. Uncertainties about our future. And in that moment of contemplation, respite for our weary minds.

I hear the wanderer’s voice. He asks, “Who are you becoming?” His whisper invites me to consider the question of my identity – the person I wish and hope to be.

The wanderer’s journey is immortalized as one of art’s most recognizable oil canvas pieces from the 18th century. Titled The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer), it is the work of the German Romanticist Caspar David Friedrich. It is a masterpiece from a time when humanity celebrated heroism, beauty, and the sublime. A time when passions and emotions were depicted through art, literature, and poetry. The wanderer hails from an era where mythic heroes and legends of virtue were commemorated by sculptors, authors, and painters.

When I peer into the painting and the world within, I feel that I am speaking with the wanderer, with the artist who created him. I hear the spirits echo from a part of humanity’s unforgotten history. I was there – atop the cliff where the sea of fog lay before me. Within the painting lay the unspoken conversations about hope and possibility. Art speaks to us. If we listen, we not only hear figures within, and the artists who created them, and voices from a time before. We are also given the chance to speak with them.

Arts and the Humanities as Pathways to the Full Life

The French surrealist painter Paul Éluard quotes, “There is another world, and it is in this one.” The quote refers to the pillars of surrealism and mystical philosophy, reminding us that a sublime reality already exists in our everyday lives. Rather than contemplate the supernatural afterlife, Eluard invites us to look at the rich layer of dreams, desires, coincidences, and raw beauty that lies beyond the surface of our daily lives. What is good and beautiful in our everyday waking moments?

I read Eluard’s quote as a call to look at art and hear its voice. To feel wonder, inspiration, and awe of another world – a world of beauty and aesthetics. Brushstrokes that capture fleeting emotion. Colours that evoke tensions in our shared history. Gradients that immortalize the fluidity of human desires. The canvas, then, is no longer simply an object that invites a fleeting glance. It is a portal to the sanctuary of the self-inasmuch as it is a gateway to other worlds. An art gallery hosts works of beauty that come alive when we offer the pieces that lie within our fullest attention.

Few of us think of art this way, but there is emerging scientific evidence that art and the humanities offer us pathways to explore ourselves. The positive humanities is an interdisciplinary field of both research and practice aimed at exploring how we can engage with art and human culture as pathways to a better life [1]. More than just a domain of academic inquiry, the arts can serve as a way to flourish. Visits to art museums and galleries can be therapeutic. A slow afternoon visit to the art gallery may also offer us the chance to slow down and invite thoughts that help us build a richer, fuller, more meaningful life. Art allows us to contemplate our feelings and to be more attuned to the emotions that shape our shared human experience [2]. An hour-long visit to an art gallery has been shown to increase feelings of inspiration while also reducing levels of irritability and nervousness [3]. Museum-based interventions – museotherapy – can promote mental health, leading researchers to view them as scalable interventions to boost community well-being [4]. A number of these studies show that directing our attention to art until new realizations emerge is the result of ‘slow-looking’ [5]. Slowing down opens up the mental and emotional space for us to realize deep and perspective-changing experiences

Even if you don’t fancy a visit to a gallery, research also indicates that other forms of engagement with the arts can have comparable, salutary effects. When we engage with music – either through listening or creating it, we become better at regulating our emotions, which over time boosts the quality of life [6]. If you like a good story and have lost yourself in your literary worlds, you might be enhancing your ability to empathize with others [7]. Immersing yourself in fiction gives you the opportunity to explore how others live, how they struggle and triumph, through their unique worldviews. And in doing so, you become more attuned and empathetic to your real-world relationships. Recent scientific studies show that poetry can also have similar flourishing effects, reducing psychological struggles and offering a complement to treatment as usual for depression, anxiety, and stress [8]. The opportunities for flourishing are possibly as numerous as there are facets of human cultural expressions.

Art galleries are spaces that invite exploration and contemplation of human experiences.

Flourishing through the Tapestry of Human Culture

As I continue my conversations with the wanderer, I return to the question he posed. Who am I becoming? What does the future hold for me? As I read further into the positive humanities, I came across a way of understanding how and why my excursions into the minds of creative individuals had such an effect on me. The arts encouraged me to reflect on life. It invited me to acquire new skills – I picked up some skills in writing haikus as part of my engagement with poetry. Being in art galleries immersed me in the world of aesthetics; I’ve lost count of the number of occasions when I stayed on longer during a visit to an exhibit, contemplating the pieces on display. I spoke to others about my experiences. My friends and I socialized and bonded over our favourite songs and movies. And I find myself subtly transformed by the arts and humanities through the creative expressions I see in my work. I do not doubt that it has affected my prose in articles like the very one you are reading now. It is quite apt that the processes – of reflection, acquisition, immersion, socialization, and expression spell out RAISE, the very model of experience highlighted by researchers in the humanities [9]. To stroll through, and engage with art, culture, and the expressions of the human mind, across historical time and space, is to take a walk in the garden of human culture. And within that garden lie untrodden pathways that allow us to reflect, learn, and be positively changed by what we see.

When might you take a stroll through the garden of culture and the humanities? Which paths would you take through this garden?

References

The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=161512471

[1] Pawelski, J. O., & Cotter, K. N. (2025). Introduction to the special issue, The positive humanities: Arts, culture and well-Being: The role of the arts and humanities in individual and communal flourishing. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 20(6), 925-931. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2025.2549290

[2] Tee, E. Y. (2024). Enhancing emotional intelligence with the positive humanities: a narrative review and proposal for well-being interventions. Emotion Review, 16(3), 162-179. https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739241259564

[3] Luke, J. J., Chesnut, K. L., Gingery, A., Guan, Y., Miao, S., Shields, E., Terry, L., Velandia-Pirazan, M., Bramblett, A., Fontana, J., Fry, M., Johnson, M., Krause, E., Krieger, L., Lam, W., Lees, M., Smith, M.S., Yorioka, P., & Zamudio, M. (2026). More inspired, less anxious: well‐being impacts of a self‐directed art museum visit. Curator: The Museum Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.70042

[4] Nosè, M., Compri, B., Cristofalo, D., Carlon, V., Kratchanova, R., Rodighiero, A., Menegazzo, C., Tedeschi, F., Turrini, G., & Barbui, C. (2025). From art to mental health: Exploring the impact of a museum-based intervention on psychological well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1591056. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1591056

[5] Tishman, S. (2017). Slow looking: The art and practice of learning through observation. Routledge.

[6] Viola, E., Martorana, M., Airoldi, C., Meini, C., Ceriotti, D., De Vito, M., De Ambrosi, D., & Faggiano, F. (2023). The role of music in promoting health and wellbeing: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European Journal of Public Health, 33(4), 738-745. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckad063

[7] Wimmer, L., Currie, G., Friend, S., Wittwer, J., & Ferguson, H. J. (2024). Cognitive effects and correlates of reading fiction: Two preregistered multilevel meta-analyses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153(6), 1464-1488. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001583

[8] Kassab, A., Jayatunje, R., & Khalil, R. B. (2025). The therapeutic functions of poetry in mental health: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychiatry Research, 116897. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2025.116897

[9] Thapa, S., Vaziri, H., Shim, Y., Tay, L., & Pawelski, J. O. (2024). Development and validation of the Mechanisms of Engagement in the Arts and Humanities scales. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 18(5), 679-698. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000556

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