The Art of Healing
In a world of AI and quickly generated content, I find that I am increasingly drawn to art that elicits emotion and creates a sense of depth. While AI-generated artists are certainly skilled and they create beautiful imagery, I don’t feel the same emotion from an AI portrait as I do a portrait created by human hands and with real human subjects.
AI cannot experience the range of emotions or experience life the way humans experience life and all that comes with it. It is in this space that we tap into the most beautiful wells of creation. I had one such experience recently with a friend from my early years of motherhood. My dear friend Evelyn asked me to create some portraits of her daughter Tess, and while I was in their home, we had a little space to create a piece for Evelyn. She told me of a self-portrait I had created a few years prior and how it had moved her, and that she wanted a piece like that for herself.
We grabbed some fabric she had purchased and I wrapped her up and then set her in a pose. While there, I asked her to just breathe and reflect on the year she’d had. She didn’t speak, and I was silent while I waited for her to tap into her experiences. What happened in front of my camera was sacred. I watched her lean into her knees and exhale a year’s worth of burden and grief and sorrow, and inhale hope and light. I whispered directions to her while I snapped a few shots… but mostly I was waiting for the exact moment that I knew transcendence was happening. And then I saw it—I released the shutter on my camera, and then sat and breathed. I captured a few more images, but I knew the moment had passed and that this one image was “the one.”
Evelyn has graciously shared this image on her social medias, and it has moved a number of people. I feel honored to have been invited into such an emotionally intimate space with her and to create this beautiful piece for her to look at as a reminder of healing and love through the journey of sorrow and grief.
If you would like to purchase a fine art print of this image, please visit my print gallery here.
