The Art Of Relaxation

‘FEELING as stressed out as a Korean border guard? Tense, nervous headache?

‘Clearing up leaves, cooking, looking after two small kids…’

Your brain packed with unexploded rage? Got an urge to scream out ‘Why me?’ at the top of your lungs, to crawl under your desk, to hug your knees and sob?

You do? Well, you need some serious help. We’d recommend that you take handfuls of brightly coloured pills but, not being doctors, we can only legally advise that you seek urgent medial assistance.

For the rest of you that muddle by and only occasionally have the desire to place your head through the computer terminal in front of you, the message is: ‘Go to Manchester.’

No, not to see people worse off than yourselves and so feel better by relation, but to pay a visit to the soothing environs of the Manchester Art Gallery.

The Times says that the venue has recruited two experts in stress management to choose pictures ‘guaranteed’ to leave even the most neurotic basket case at ease with themselves and their world.

So welcome one and all to the ‘tranquillity tour’, which invites city-centre workers to spend their lunch hours staring at a canvas.

‘Looking at art is a stress relieving activity,’ says Kim Gowland, an executive at the gallery, who wants the stressed out to chill out with paintings rather than rush round the shops.

Helpfully, for those readers not in the Manchester locale, the Times reproduces some of the collection’s works, including Durden’s Summer in Cumberland, Thomson’s Aeolian Harp by Turner and Millais’ Autumn Leaves.

Times readers can cut out and keep the calming snapshots in a wallet or other handy place where they can be gazed at moments of high stress.

The rest of us can buy some crayons and begin creating our own art by drawing on the walls…’

Posted: 16th, June 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink