To live with art is to live with heightened awareness. It is a daily practice of noticing, of letting colour and form fold into your experience of place.
Creativity sits quietly in the background until you catch it in motion: the glint of light on glass, a mural along a back lane, the way a painted surface recalibrates how you step into a room. Public and private art alike shape these encounters in ways both subtle and transformative. When art enters a room or unfolds across a public site, it carries with it a charge of memory and awareness.
At Art Pharmacy, we have seen a dull corner bloom into gathering ground, a workplace soften into somewhere people want to linger, and a stairwell whisper wonder to those who might otherwise pass without looking up, as in Rowena Martinich’s Trace at Axis Alexandria. . Art can become a language both personal and universal, a companion that refuses to fade into anonymity.
This article explores how art nurtures wellbeing across workplaces, homes, and public life, and how living artistically can transform the ordinary into something alive with care.
Living Artistically in Ordinary Spaces
Living artistically is less about acquiring knowledge and more about cultivating attentiveness. It is pausing long enough to notice sunlight shifting across bricks or the blur of paint along a wall. It is about letting surprise in, even when the setting feels utilitarian.
Art Pharmacy’s project Trace, created by Rowena Martinich at Axis Alexandria, offers this invitation. An industrial stairwell, designed for brief and often overlooked use, now vibrates with sweeping gestures of blue. The strokes of paint resist the rigidity of concrete geometry, creating a counterpoint that sparks vitality. For most, the stairwell is a space occupied for only seconds, yet Rowena’s work reclaims it as a site of wonder. To pass through is to be reminded that beauty is not confined but waiting in the places you least expect.
Workplaces as Sites of Wellbeing
Work environments often prioritise efficiency at the expense of vitality. Sterile walls and repeated forms can drain the senses, yet art changes the temperature of a room instantly. A mural can lift collective energy, a painting can introduce calm, and a curated collection can shift how colleagues and visitors relate to a place.
At Art Pharmacy, our workplace curation is not decoration. It is a deliberate act of transforming atmosphere. Art reorients conversation, disrupts monotony, and provides moments of recognition that ripple through the culture of a team.
Artists in Dialogue with Community
For artists, wellbeing deepens when their work enters public life. A painting that becomes part of an office or a mural that threads through a neighbourhood acquires new layers of meaning. It becomes a participant in daily rhythms, shaping memory and sparking imagination.
Our role is to connect artists with spaces where their work can flourish in dialogue with community. These collaborations expand practice, invite experimentation, and ensure that creativity resonates far beyond the studio.
Art as Care
Every artwork holds the capacity to act as care. A curated project in a workplace can shift how people feel in their daily routine. A mural in a public setting can change the way a neighbourhood is experienced. Both create opportunities to pause, to notice, and to reconnect.
Art and wellbeing move together. Creativity reminds us to be attentive, to feel connected, and to see our environments with renewed clarity. At Art Pharmacy, we understand art not as an accessory but as something that shapes how spaces are lived in.
Rowena Martinich’s Trace demonstrates this vividly. The once-unremarkable stairwell at Axis Alexandria is now animated with sweeping colour, offering energy where there was none before. For those who pass through, it is not simply a painted wall but an encounter that leaves a trace of care.
Article by Francesca Culy
