[Photo credit: Gyae Min/Pixabay]
Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim Museum in 1943. He was 76 years old.
Galileo authored his final paper at age 74.
In the last four years of Picasso’s life—he lived until 91—he created more work than at any other comparable time.
Maybe there’s something to the idea of creativity in older adulthood. After all, it can be a time when mental energies can shift. “When you’re older, you’re off that treadmill, so you can free up some horsepower in the service of creativity,” said Robert Levenson, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, in a Time article in 2013.
Simple activities may assist with the added creative horsepower. Daniel Levitan, author of Successful Aging, noted, “Interacting with the world also enhances creativity.” These activities don’t have to be complicated. Older adults permitted to walk around an outdoor landscape had higher scores on creativity assessments compared to those individuals that strolled around a rectangular path.
A significant part of the “staying sharp” story is related to synaptic plasticity, the ability to create new brain connections. Though affected by genetics, this plasticity is also linked with daily experiences and cultures. Physical activity can be instrumental in plasticity, as can memory and general cognition.
Creativity also relates to learning, widely believed to be protective against cognitive decline. People have some control over their brain health, noted Alan Gow, a psychology professor at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. “There are changes in lifestyle we can make at all stages of life that can affect cognition later in life,” he said in a Monitor on Psychology article earlier this year.
Stimulating curiosity, an element of creative thinking, can be involved in learning for older adults. In fact, state curiosity, marked by times when people experience something unfamiliar or new, can significantly increase in middle age and continue to grow in older adulthood.
Creativity can also extend to finding purpose in life, according to Kerry Burnight, author of Joyspan. She proposed three other categories of life purpose (financial, prosocial, and personal recognition), and, in regard to creativity, maintained that it can be beneficial in innovation, artistry, and problem-solving.
Louise Aronson, a noted geriatrician and professor emeritus at the University of California at San Francisco, related that older adulthood is not necessarily an avenue for sole decline. “Will you continue to age? Yes. Will you die? Without a doubt. But you can make it much better,” she said in a Washington Post article.
Creativity can be just one tool in that “better” toolbox.
References
Burnight, K. (2025). Joyspan: The art and science of thriving in life’s second half. Worthy Publishing.
Kluger, J. (2013, September 23). How to live long. Time. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2151786,00.html
Levitan, D. J. (2020). Successful aging: A neuroscientist explores the power and potential of our lives. Dutton.
Penman, M. (2025, March 25). People 65 and older can get better with age, study shows. This is the key. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2026/03/25/aging-positive-mindset/
Stringer, H. (April/May 2026). How learning protects the aging brain. Monitor on Psychology, pp. 46-55. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2026/04-05/learning-protects-aging-brain