This digital artwork is inspired by Carol S. Jeffer's article, "Engaging Mind, Body, and Soul: Essential Connections for Art Education." The article talks about what it means to take into account a students entirety, their whole being when we are teaching them. Her insights on empathy really struck me, and one paragraph in particular was written very poetically and image rich.

 

“To understand the nature of this energy-harmony, we need only to examine our capacity for empathy, and to locate it not in the stardust of the cosmos or in a Jungian concept of the collective unconscious, but in the cells of the human body and the synapses of it’s brain.”

 

Images that I included in the background layers include: a page from the 16th century book, De Dissectione Partium Corporis Humani, by Charles Esteine that depicts the human nervous system, a photograph of a far off galaxy, a photograph of some neurons and finally an image of my 16 year old step son Ian who graciously posed for this photo. Using images that are both perosnal and intimate to my life, as well as the most intimate images of the human brain, what I may consider the physical incarnation of the soul, and speckled in the background is the negative spattering of stars and the cosmos. We are all connected, body, mind, energy, soul.