COCO OWEN, PhD

I’ve juggled interests in psychology, the humanities, and writing since I was an undergraduate. This juggling wasn’t always very smooth: sometimes it meant spending a month writing poetry when I was supposed to be working on my dissertation or setting poetry aside for a couple of years while I started my private practice. But psychology and creativity are always at play in my attention whether I’m working with a visual artist in my private practice or writing a poem contesting the Freudian notion of anatomy as destiny. When I began doing iPhone photography, I found it really sharpened my attention to detail and gave me a visceral experience of how powerful filters and frames really are—reflections I’ve of course found instructive in my psychology practice.

The Vast Ocean of Feelings
(Digital Photograph, 4032 x 3024 pixels,
Suggested Size: 18” High x 24” Wide) 

In addition to my practice as a psychologist, I am a published poet and words are my natural medium. However, during the pandemic I spent lots of time in Hawai'i and began taking photographs of the always stunning scenery. But I was driven to alter those 'easy' representations by cropping, tinting, and distorting the scale--operations which I felt in a way were also happening to our collective perceptions because of the pandemic.

So to me, the unknown couple in this seascape of unreal and brilliant blues presents a figure/ground riddle of the human condition: Is Love an experience set against a sublime and unnerving ground of Vastness or is it the other way around?

cocoowenphd@gmail.com
www.cocoowenphd.com
instagram.com/cocoowenphd