The Guernica was a painting drawn by Picasso after a bombing in a Spanish town called Guernica. It was used to show the horrors of war. I chose the scene in Guernica where a woman is looking upward & screaming while holding her dead child. Her mouth is wide open & she looks as if she’s in pain. The emotion I focused on was grief. I chose this scene because it stood out to me the most & I feel like grief is an interesting emotion that is hard to understand.
In the scene I chose, a mother is screaming out for help while holding her dead child. This scene shows the emotion I chose, which is grief, by showing how upset the mother is. She’s so desperate & upset while holding her dead child that she’s crying out for help.
The neurotransmitter connected to the emotion in my scene is oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone & neurotransmitter often called the "love hormone" because it’s released during bonding moments. In the brain, it helps create feelings of trust, connection, and comfort, while in the body it can reduce stress by lowering cortisol levels & calming the nervous system. When we lose someone we love, the bonding that oxytocin helped create is suddenly broken. Since oxytocin is linked to attachment, its absence after a loss can make grief feel even more painful.
I represented oxytocin in my artwork through streaks coming from the heart. I drew two women, one is upset & the other is comforting her on top. It’s similar to the woman in Guernica who is grieving her dead child, but my drawing is as if her child isn’t dead. Around the two women it’s dark, to represent grief. I learned that chemistry is a part of almost everything. It’s easy to draw an emotion, but it’s even cooler to be able to understand the chemistry behind that emotion.
This project helped me to understand the chemistry behind emotions & how our body is affected by the situations that are going on around us. Understanding the science behind how we feel is important because it helps us know why we feel certain emotions. It also helps us figure out what’s going on in our brains & bodies when we feel these things. When we understand our emotions better, we can learn how to deal with them in healthier ways.
