How This Hobby Has Completely Changed My Life

When my teacher thought I was ready to take the next step, he suggested I work with acrylic paint, since watercolor is hard to control, oil paint takes a long time to dry, and I can be, well, impatient. I decided to paint portraits, my favorite art at any museum or gallery, because I find it fascinating to see a face, sometimes from long ago, captured for posterity by an artist.

My goal was to paint my young grandchildren, since I was never going to be the granny who knits sweaters. And, thinking ahead, I longed to give these kids some tangible, loving evidence to prove I once walked the earth.

I began by printing out pictures I’d taken of the grandkids on my phone, then tried to copy them. My first tries were laughable: Who were these people with no neck, vacant expressions and noses and teeth that didn’t even attempt to resemble noses and teeth? I also discovered the fun of mixing paints to create just the right color — a swirl of ecru, a dab of purple and voilà, the perfect skin tone emerges. I also loved the names of some colors — burnt sienna! Sunflower! Naples yellow! This, along with the ambiance of the studio, which was calm as a snow globe but not austere and occasionally chatty, was just right for this friendly introvert.

Eventually, a few of my efforts started to look…familiar. I decided to display some of the portraits in my dining room and have enjoyed the reaction guests toss my way. “You did those? Really?” “I like the one with your son embracing his son.” The best compliment: “You’re so creative!”

Creativity, I’ve decided, is a trait far too many of us underestimate in ourselves. Maybe that’s because it’s generally lower on the food chain than abilities that typically advance a career. When I was hired to be the editor-in-chief of McCall’s magazine, I suspect it had less to do with my creative ability to develop fresh ideas and write zingy headlines than with my ability to stay on deadline and budget and hire and manage a talented staff.

These aptitudes required energy, common sense, experience, organizational skills and some intelligence. Creativity? Helpful, but optional.

Teamwork, the essence of many jobs, has its rewards. But savoring that a painting you create, a song you write or a cake you decorate is exclusively yours, alone, brings a different, confidence-building joy. You did it, solo, with no thanks to the person in the next cubicle or, for that matter, Claude and ChatGPT. For better or worse, what you made is original. Take that, AI.

Participating in the creative arts is calming, fun and — if you do it in a group — companionable, and also has a powerful impact on well-being, as told to me by John-Morgan Bush, director of extension at the famed Juilliard School. He uses the term “creative aging” to refer to how the arts can support growth in life’s later stages.

“Expressing your creativity engages multiple domains at once — cognitive, emotional and social — and supports memory, attention and problem-solving,” says Bush. “It pushes back against the idea that aging is a period of decline and frames it as a time of continued development and curiosity.”

Most importantly, creativity does not diminish with age, it may deepen. Bush sees it as a second ignition switch, not a polite euphemism for staying busy in retirement, because creativity can intensify rather than fade.

“Older adults often bring a greater sense of perspective, patience and emotional range to the process, with less concern for external validation and more interest in expression for its own sake,” he says.

So, doodle away, create that symphony playing in your mind. Aging isn’t the slow closing of the creative door. It’s the realization that you live in a mansion with unexplored rooms. Everyone, I’m convinced, can be creative in some way. It’s up to us to figure out how — which, by the way, my sister did.

She’s still the artist who created hundreds of ketubot (marriage contracts) with exquisite Hebrew calligraphy and intricate personalized borders that resemble ancient manuscripts.

As for me, I’m going to try to paint a son and his family, a scene from the pandemic. They are standing by the harbor in Brooklyn, all in masks, the skyline of Manhattan in the background. I hope the moment captured in this image will remind me that dark times don’t last forever and that I have both a reborn creative streak and a loving family.