How to Be Artistic in Your Golden Years

Today’s post is from author and writing coach Catharine Bramkamp, and I’m featuring an excerpt from her new book, Take Up Space: Art is Your Second Act, which is a guide to living creatively, vibrantly, and unapologetically after fifty.

What if your best years—your most creative, passionate, fulfilling years—are just beginning?

Inspired by Jenny Joseph’s iconic poem “When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple,” Take Up Space invites you to level up your next decade from mundane to marvelous. Whether you paint, dance, garden, write, or dress like an icon, art can become your path to meaning, vitality, and connection.

It’s time to stop shrinking back and start showing up. Pick up a brush, a pen, or your favorite red hat — and take up space.

We are told  by an Arts & Health Study, that just as “physical activity and nutrition is good for our health, so is regular participation in the arts. These can be experienced by receptive engagement or active participation such as watching a performance, listening to music and dancing, going to museums, attending drum circles or a painting class. The focus is on engaging in the process of arts participation rather than emphasizing the end result of the final product.”

I would just like to say that after being beaten repeatably about the head and shoulders by the ubiquitous but nutritional broccoli stalk, lumping the arts into that grim good for us prescriptive isn’t exactly inspiring.

Perhaps a better way to promote the arts is to lump art practices with pounds of chocolate and one too many martinis. (Not together). In the past, that was exactly the association, if you weren’t drunk on wine, you were high on wormwood, a key ingredient in absinthe.  What if we brought back the roots of art: transgressive artists, creatives who are banned in many states, dangerous, thought provoking.  Let’s make art that causes our children to  clutch their pearls and exclaim, “what is the older generation coming to?”

What if art is more fun than exercise and tastier than nutritious food?  I absolutely agree that practicing art will elevate your mood, decrease pain, increase feel good hormones, but the practice has been elevated to a shelf many of us can’t reach.  Art is caviar, lobster tail and organic greens from co-op farms run by enlightened former cons.

But art can also be chicken nuggets.

Art is joy, art is doing, art is practicing and getting it wrong before we get it right: political poetry, build a bear, derivative music, a sculpture of dryer lint or a video of growing broccoli.

Start an art practice that delivers not gallery-worthy products, but rather the satisfaction found exclusively in fried bread.

Here are some de-elevated ideas:

Dance/Movement 

You can join a class featuring Jazz or ballet or you can take a pole dancing class: exercise and strength training plus the heart palpitations  you inspire when you announce your new routine to the next meeting of the DAR.  Be prepared to show off the bruises on your inner thighs.

Literary Arts 

You can join a Jane Austen book club, or you can discover and/or indulge in Graphic Novels. Discover the new, new artists, and emerging ways to story tell.  An interest in graphic novels can lead to Manga which can lead to comic cons, which can lead to elaborate costumes and a trip to Tokyo.  Allow something offbeat to take you on an adventure.

Media

Not social media but video games or film shorts and quirky film festivals. Discover digital culture. Play a few popular games like Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox.  If you like to game, go ahead and get sucked in. No school nights for us. Be part of the movement.

Music

Go big.  Take up an instrument.  Or stay interested – concerts or a curated playlist.  Get curious.  Follow your favorite bands and collect the albums, which leads to the next logical step – seeing them live. Never been to Chicago? Then buy the Chicago stop on the band tour.  Does the band need to be approved or popular?  Nope.  Find your unique groove and enjoy a night in the company of similarly inclined crazy fans. Get the T-shirt.

Theatre/Performance 

Begin as a fan and graduate to a performer. Attend enough stand up comedy nights and you’ll believe you too can do it.  So do it. Be a regular on Karaoke night, study and watch modern dance – then find a troupe to join.   Maybe you can leverage those pole dancing skills to join the circus.

 Visual Arts 

Drag yourself to a gallery or museum. Bring a sandwich and allow for inspiration rather than overwhelm.  Like anything on the walls?  Or did you find more appealing art at the swap meet?  Like stand up, the more frequently you visit museums and swap meets, the better perspective you’ll have on your own work.  You may not be creating museum quality (whatever that means) work, but just maybe your knitted pieces would sell well at the next Christmas Craft fair.

 Practical Arts

Remember feeding people is an art.  What do you love to cook or better, what are you already skilled at creating?  Do more of that, double down on food you love. Explore the origins, the transitions, buy fresh herbs and spices.  Take an advanced class in your favorite food.  Become an expert, upgrade your equipment. Create food and drinks that are both creative and delicious.  Wine making, haute couture cocktails, smoked meats, grilled fish, pizza (build your own pizza oven).  Grow herbs. As always, you’ll need to take a trip to sample your favorite food, then take cooking lessons. Forget praying and loving, eat through Italy.

 Art and Health

Art is not good for you – it’s great for you, far more fun than choking down raw vegetables and suffering through 25 weight-lift repetitions per miserable season.

The numbers support what we all instinctively know to be true.  In a survey by  Americans for the Arts (2024), we find, unsurprisingly that:

• About 9 in 10 Americans (86%) believe “arts and culture improve my community’s quality of life and livability.”
• 69% of Americans say that taking part in the arts and culture has “a positive effect on their overall health and well-being.”
• Over 4 in 5 Americans (81%) believe the arts may “help some people deal with mental health issues such as loneliness, depression, and anxiety.”
• Arts and culture can strengthen communities and builds social cohesion. 72% of Americans believe that “arts and culture provides shared experiences with people of different races, ethnicities, ages, beliefs, and identities.”
• 63% agree that the arts “help me better understand other cultures in my community.”

We know the arts enhance and are an important economic contributor to our communities and our country.

•  79% of Americans believe the arts are “good for local businesses, the economy, and Jobs”
• 72% favor government funding of arts and culture to address job and economic development.

All that is beneficial about art shouldn’t be off-putting. Art has never served as a health-and-safety poster. Art is both edgy and ridiculous. Take the leap from the trapeze to the top of the pizza oven brandishing a blow torch. What could go wrong?

Know someone who is newly retired or an empty-nester?  Don’t know what to do with themselves? Take up Space is a how-to book to navigate the second act of life through Art.

Catharine Bramkamp is a world traveler, poet, and belly dancer. In her spare time, she serves as a writing coach and workshop facilitator. She has authored thirty fiction, nonfiction, and poetry collections and is currently exploring all kinds of art, including outlets in which she has no talent. But it’s fun. Visit Catharine at her website here.

Featured Photo by Dina Badamshina on Unsplash

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