Inside Art: October 2025

By Louise Seirmarco-Yale, Reston Artist

Oh good! Halloween is almost here! The holiday invites us to turn even the most ordinary home into a stage set. Front yards become haunted forests, porches glow like pumpkin-lit galleries, and the whole scene feels enchanting. It’s the first holiday of the season that transforms life into art, setting the tone for the decorative magic that will carry us through November and December.

Unlike professional art, Halloween thrives on lopsided jack-o’-lanterns, silly costumes, and over-the-top cobwebs. Adults rediscover how much fun art can be–expressive rather than polished, just like when we finger-painted as children. Preparing for Halloween, we give ourselves freedom from perfection. Fog machines, flickering candles, and eerie soundtracks let us experience our environment as fantastical. This mirrors the way children see wonder everywhere. Shadows become shapes, and sounds spark stories. Halloween restores our sense of magic through artful staging.

Adults can reclaim the childhood magic of “let’s pretend” when they stage their homes as haunted mansions, enchanted forests, or playful spook-fests. Decorations like gravestones, skeletons, or cobwebs tell tiny stories. It is so out of the ordinary that it’s just plain fun. Art is like that.

From stringing orange lights to staging spooky yard displays, we can all turn the everyday into the extraordinary. For adults, this mirrors childhood fort-building or decorating a treehouse. It is the delight of pure visual play with no utilitarian purpose. That is like art, too, and it’s good for us.

One of the greatest rewards of the holiday is that Halloween does not hand out just candy; it hands back childlike wonder. It taps into something primal–the urge to create, to dress up, to see the world transformed into theater.

It also offers the reward of working with our hands to carve a pumpkin, craft a mask, or cobble together a homemade costume. It reawakens the simple tactile love of making art—cutting, gluing, painting, shaping—actions we often abandon after childhood.

Children love to pretend to be superheroes, monsters, or royalty. Halloween lets adults reclaim that playful invention by allowing us to try on identities that stir creativity and imagination in ways daily life rarely allows. Dressing up for the fun of it just feels good.

Family pumpkin-carving nights or group costume-planning sessions echo the childhood thrill of making art together. We remember how communal creativity bonds people rather than isolating them in private endeavors.

In essence, Halloween is our annual reminder that the inner child never disappears. It only waits for moments when art, play, and imagination are given free rein. So this month, give yourself permission to play. Join the Halloween fun, and let the art spirit inside you come back to life.

Louise Seirmarco-Yale is a Reston Speaker, Teacher and the Author of “Art. You Be The Judge. Reawaken your Instincts and Enjoy Art On Your Own Terms”, available on Amazon. Download for free at www.peopleneedart.com. Email her at: hello@peopleneedart.com FB and Instagram @louise_seirmarco_art