A Ferrari window that changed his perspective with psychotherapist, artist Lee du Ploy.

May 7

*Artist, phsychotherapist Dr. Lee Du Ploy*

Ep.10 | From his art studio in Sheung Wan we delve into his life’s work and we talk about his early career working with the rich and famous, the trappings of owning a Ferrari and the complex challenge of measuring emotions in psychiatry.

Through his amusing, real-life, and at times ironic anecdotes, we analyse society’s obsession with the attachment of monetary success, why depression doesn’t exist in Zimbabwe, and a lady who suffers from face blindness. The latter is also known as prosopagnosia, a condition when the individual doesn’t recognise faces.

Dr Lee du Ploy is both an artist and a complementary medical practitioner. He has exhibited his paintings since the early 1970's. His book "The Glass facade" is written to record his journey of treating people with psychological problems. As he said “Whereas psychology is my passion, art is my life. They are in essence the same journey.” He now has a studio and works in Hong Kong.

“I have over the last ten years explored via my paintings how we react emotionally and how the face conforms to that thought. We react to an emotional response sometimes ecstatically and sometimes dramatically sad. I have tried to incorporate the emotional responses be that via the eyes or the slant of the head in my portraits.

People ask why my portraits always look sad, we reflect what we see, however many times what appears to be melancholic is just immensely interesting. Pretty pictures to me are irrelevant, they really don't reflect reality, hence, I suppose why I paint what I do to explore the extremes of human nature.”