WHAT

Tall forest trees. Vast expanses of sky. The way that certain music has space in it.

I am currently working with sound, gaze and movement to explore what makes us feel expanded by these experiences.

WHY

I am fascinated by the sensory aspects of feelings.

The more I explore expansive feeling states the more I see that our sensory world and our relationship to the space around us are part of the experience.

I have been exploring this area for a long time. From a moment on the school playground when I was 6, through to later in my life when the feeling of expansion helped me through a period of trauma and grief. As a trained therapist, I am used to working with emotions as thoughts and behaviours, but to me the feeling of expansion is not cognitive. At least not at first. This is what fascinates me. The feelings that begin in the senses.

HOW

My work currently uses sound and moving image to create the conditions for these feeling states to be felt by other people.
An installation is in development.

Previous iterations of this work have involved text art, poetry, installations and songwriting. It was during my MMus degree in 2024 that I finally found the territory for my enquiry whilst researching musical awe. A discussion of the sense of vastness and how we sense space pre-cognitively. I have been researching awe, expansiveness, flow states and the sensing of space ever since.

Current work is supported by Arts Council Wales.