Green and Cyan

New Work
Project Title: Empathy
Date: Project completed 07/09/2023
Artist Statement Notes:
We may not find out that we are able to look within for many years growing up, but it is empathy that awakens this feeling and lesson in life. If you can reach out and have empathy, you have learned how to love. This project expounds on the idea of being close to the spiritual lesson of love and empathy. The empathetic and emotional response when we see things up close is much stronger than when we see things far away.
As body language, we all want to get closer to discover, to abstract, to become personalized with our subject. The initial response of creating a closeness to something to better understand its elements is a part of the close-ups I have selected from my library. They are my language to myself and to the world declaring that this is what I have discovered, this is what I am close to.
I use green and cyan colors of creativity and growing to represent the emotional responses we have getting up close to things. We have a sense of relaxation in the color cyan, like blue. Green represents new things and growing, like plants.
In the series, I hope that the innocence of empathy is what is collected by my viewer. The ability to see things as our own innocence does creates a place in our hearts for empathy.
Project Description:
This idea of empathy and movement derived from the connection we feel when we get closer to our subject, or our subject matter. This is an abstract way to visualize, as well the meanings of colors in terms of the elements of art and principles of design. I provide the given colors as a theme for the project because I want the concept to be narrowed down and internalized by the viewers. The concept, while broad and undefined, as empathy, is surrounded and bridled by the chosen colors to help show why each image is intuitive of the viewer’s emotions.
The closer we get, not in an uncomfortable way, but just in terms of observations, we are studying subject matter in terms of its direct relationship to us. To make this movement towards, or inward, I feel its personality, its essence and the aura that surrounds the objects, or library images. By moving inward, we are simultaneously moving inward in our minds to study the subjects, I make judgements and create a sense of understanding, or empathetic response to better understand how to photograph each time.
I used a lightbox, product photography techniques and intentionally added photographs from my library of images to in terms, create composites in Photoshop. I used a Nikon D5300 with three different lenses, a micro lens, and filters as needed.
As this learning process continues, the green and cyan colors work with the viewer in terms of the experience of learning, empathizing, and creating a connection to the subject matter. The subject matter is form-based, also creating a visual narrative that is unique to each viewer.