Visual art is enlightening, challenging, informative and arresting; but it can also be therapeutic, reducing anxiety and stress levels, and offering perspective on the challenges that we all face in our lives.

This guide introduces readers to new ways of looking at a wide range of art. Through careful examination and explanation, it investigates how engaging with art and drawing upon its ideas can help everyone feel connected and inspired. From Frida Kahlo confronting her anxieties to Henri Matisse embracing happiness, from Louise Bourgeois conquering fear to Auguste Rodin finding hope, it shows how you too can use art to work through difficult emotions and improve your mental wellbeing. Even art that unsettles can help us to think and feel differently.

Artists have been conveying aspirations, emotions, ideas and stories for thousands of years; this book will help everyone to ‘read’ these messages, and thereby to enrich their own emotional life through art.