About ‘Empathy’ Series
‘Feelings of Empathy’ is a series of images and poems that collectively express the idea of human emotion. From the time we are born we start to develop feelings and as we grow through adolescence we develop ways of understanding how different emotions affect the way we approach life. For many people, feelings can be experienced as positive reactions to situations, for others the same feelings could be experienced as negative and destructive. It all depends on how the individual reacts, interprets and responds to the stimulus they encounter.
As a creative person I am aware that images and poems can be construed in many ways and what I see in an image can be entirely different to how the viewer sees them. For me, poetry allows me to express positive and negative feelings. In the world we live in it could be argued that all poetry ultimately is about life and death. The creative force of poetry can be used to show good over evil, love over anger, and this offers the reader something positive that can be set against a negative reaction. With this in mind, I have asked various people their views on what they see and feel from these images and integrated their ideas into this body of work. In the same vein I have asked these people to take responsibility for naming each image. The poems in the series also reflect in part the person who named the image, the emotion it represents, and the title of each image. Combine these three elements with a fourth element, my own life experience, to bestow meaning to the images. The images that I have created for this series can be viewed with this in mind. Each image has a focal point of a head or group of heads that lead the viewer through different landscapes and environments. The heads are purposely created without attributes of characteristic quality. The intention of this was that the ‘viewer’ could with a little imagination and creativity, unite and merge their image with the heads in the series. If this is possible then ‘Feelings of Empathy’ works as a series.
The images in the series are loaded with signs and symbols that use colour, tone, position and environment. In many ways this series has helped me understand and explore the intense emotion that I have experienced throughout my own life.
This series would go into the categories of Healing Art, Mystical Art, Computer Art & Spiritual Art