Endoxa
This Lesson from Painters Could Change the World
What connection can Empathy have with painting?
By Princy Saini
Empathy (I’ll call her Em) has been a significant occupant of my mind for a long time. She has been living up there for so long that she would have bought a corner in my head had she been paying installments. The first time Em came to me was five years ago and has been peeping into most other places in my brain ever since. In one such peeping instance, I spotted Em staring at me while I was drawing one day. She asked me if she could stay for a while as she somehow felt at home in the ‘drawing’ room. I wondered why that could be. What connection can Empathy have with painting? It made me think.
Is Empathising somewhat like Painting?
Basic color theory (in painting) says there are three primary colors — Red, Blue, and Yellow — all other hues are derived out of mixing them. As we add white to any of these mixed or primary colors it becomes a different ‘tint’ and similarly adding black gives a different ‘shade’.
When painters see a landscape they want to draw, they mix these colors into various others. They keep mixing until they arrive at the color that looks like the subject they are trying to bring on…
