The Art of Aliveness
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
flora. I'm just not into all these organic shapes and flowy lines were supposed to be using. My heart sank. It was one of my early teaching gigs. A week long painting retreat in the bush outside of Perth Australia. We had gathered in a place that felt like an abandoned summer camp for kids complete with bunk beds, eucalyptus trees, and regular visits from kookaburras who enjoyed perching on the edges of our canvases. This was one of my first international retreats and I was thrilled to be painting outside on the other side of the world with a wonderful group of women. But halfway through the retreat, one of the participants came up to me and shared that she was feeling really frustrated with the organic shapes and flowy lines we'd all been turning out. She paused and added it. I'm an architect. My intention from the beginning of my time as a painting guide had always been to inspire creative freedom and invite everyone's unique personal style to emerge. I didn't want to teach folks to paint just like me, but many of us are hardwired to learn by following directions and emulating what the teacher is doing here. I was creating a demo painting, thinking I was showing different aspects of my process and offering tangible examples of how to create intuitively without a plan. But for some people, I was actually creating tension between following their own creative impulses and trying to follow my example. The light bulb blinked on as I saw how easy it could be for my students to think their paintings needed to look like mine in order to get it right, noticing this allowed me to make the vital distinction between sharing a creative philosophy and teaching a creative style with this insight, I explained to the architect that what I was sharing was indeed an approach to creativity based on freedom, curiosity, and spontaneity, whatever colors, marks and shapes she arranged on the canvas were absolutely up to her own inclinations, preferences and intuition. In other words, it's less about what it looks like in the end and more about how it comes into being. When I asked the architect to imagine a painting that reflected her personality, she dove into a description of her kind of painting, more angled, geometric and organized. As soon as she shared this, I started to feel her excitement which inspired my own both eager to see this painting come to life. I wholeheartedly encouraged her to let go of any should or supposed to use and lean into her own aesthetic and inclinations. This invitation and permission to let go of a formula and simply be herself on the canvas, changed everything. She returned to her paintings with fresh eyes and a renewed commitment to make the process, her own creating without the pressure to make it look any certain way, felt new for her. And it didn't take long for two stunning paintings to emerge bold, perpendicular lines intersected to create what felt like an abstract cityscape inside the boxy shapes, a moody palette of gray, poker and white emerged with pops of orange and red. The results were soothing and expressive, and nothing like the other paintings under the eucalyptus trees that day.