Leadership Council - Reflections

I’m feeling especially fortunate to have been invited to a Leadership Council by Michel Spruance and Tyler Scheid to join a co-creative process with an inspiring collective of sage advisers. In our opening session we “gathered to imagine the essence and possibilities of Leadership and Ways of Being that bring us closer to Thriving in times of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA).”

Below are two reflections from this opening session, one through the lens of the individual and the next through the lens of the collective:

---

The power of the slingshot

We may feel we are moving backwards but this force is exactly what is needed to propel us forward. 

The tension we may be feeling is what gives us power. More tension provides more power. 

We grab on tightly and then release. 

We aim our force in a desired direction without knowing exactly where it will land. Simultaneously decisive and vulnerable to an unknown outcome—strong back with open heart. 

Now has the potential to become an inflection point propelling from incremental to monumental change. The slingshot's force is magnified by tension, when released this tension amplifies our rate of change. 

The purple drip was not intended and I was about to clean it up and then decided to just let it be. This chance event became the inflection point of "now" and the purpose of the diagram stemmed from it. Like the release of the slingshot toward an unknown destination--when we accept our lack of control, embrace our vulnerability--our purpose is allowed to emerge. 

---

The power of the quilt

Our council a patchwork of unique individuals with extraordinary experiences whose impact expands exponentially as we stitch together. 

Our activation from potential energy to kinetic energy is limited as individuals on our own path

Our activation from potential energy to kinetic energy is enhanced as a collective leveraging our symbiosis. Embracing mutualism both organisms benefit from the relationship. 

We lift each other, and ourselves, to new heights of kinetic energy by stitching our life experiences together--our quilt of shared stories stronger, our shared voice projecting further.

We are boundless. Designing new patches together off one another’s dreams we continue to grow organically in all directions. The power of story constrained by neither space nor time.

One potential outcome from our council is continuing the evolution of our ancestral oral history through the modern age of communication. Knowledge has been passed from elders to the next generation through stories, however, we currently are immersed in a social media cacophony where our next generation may only hear indecipherable noise and emerge story-less. The power of myth potentially submerged. The ancestral knowledge potentially unlinked. 

A prompt for the evolution of our council:

Through stitching together our experiences and stories, how might we partner to expand our ancestral quilt, empowering future generations of knowledge to continue to be shared and new insights to emerge?

Family Tree

How might we show family lineage as a cycle rather than a linear path?

How might a family tree layer past with present, helping us experience multiple generations simultaneously?

Inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, I was curious how layering water color washes might lead to a similar Magic Realism as the book—melding family across multiple generations. In this study a tree encircled by a family of birds is in both the foreground and the background. Could the viewer experience both of these moments in time simultaneously?

A fractal family tree

Family Tree

In the foreground the family of birds encircle a tree.

Each one in their own field….

…yet connected by a shared current

Layering Foreground and Background

The Tree of Life is both in the foreground and the background on a shared horizon line—a shared body of water.

The golden bird is approaching the tree both in the foreground and in the background. As the viewer we zoom in and out of the painting, experiencing two birds at one moment in time…and one bird at two moments in time.

Time becomes a resource we have control over. Fast, slow, or a complete standstill as we migrate through the painting.

Perhaps Magical Realism can free us from the shackles of a fixed moment in time.

Mobius Trip

Curious how the viewer of a painting could become an active participant, I composed a three-frame painting where the background in one frame becomes the foreground in another and the viewer’s perspective zooms in and out following the flow across the layered landscapes.

We experience multiple perspectives of the same space at the same moment in time—similar to a Mobius Strip where we simultaneously see one surface from two perspectives.

Flight Path

The Heron…

…and the Dove…

…connect in the foreground of the center frame.

They take flight into the background reconnecting at a distant three-tiered waterfall in the center frame.

The Heron, perched on a rock glowing orange red. The Dove, gliding through waterfalls blue and violet.

Their flight path loops forward to the mid-ground on the right frame—the same three-tiered waterfall seen from closer in.

The Heron and the Dove follow the flow of the pond in the right frame to the pond in the center frame—back to the starting point like the center of a Mobius Strip. Once more they take flight to the background, this time reconnecting at the distant sunset cliffs near the waterfall of gold.

Their flight path loops forward again, but this time to the mid-ground of the left frame—the same sunset cliffs and river of gold seen from closer in.

Following the flow of the current, the Heron and Dove return once again to the foreground of the center frame—continuing their Mobius Trip.

Space and Time

The flight pattern of the Heron and the Dove is a figure eight. In and out between foreground, mid-ground and background their path stitches the three painting frames together.

Space is layered…time is fluid

Space is compressed…time is unleashed

Space and time are woven together in a continuous current of flowing water. An eternal spring streaming in and out of the frames. Back and forth forever.

Frames

The painting format is composed of three frames that are simultaneously:

adjacent to one another—stitching together a seamless landscape of cliffs and waterfalls

overlayed onto one another—melding a single event, a single point in time, across multiple frames

Each individual frame is simultaneously an independent perspective and a shared perspective, cohesive across the other frames.

We can’t be in two places at the same time? A self-imposed limitation that we can soar beyond.
The frames, like the single Mobius Strip surface, unfold through space and time. A playground for the viewer soaring through the frames with the Heron and the Dove.

Re-orienting

A Mobius Strip is defined as a non-oriented surface. We can redefine it, and this painting, as a multi-oriented surface.

The viewer experiences multiple perspectives of a single event and multiple events from a single perspective. Layered together the viewer moves in and out between them.

Re-orienting our own path.

Re-framing our own experience

Active participation

This study expands beyond traditional renaissance paintings where we the passive viewer are constrained to a fixed perspective. Released from our one-point perspective cage, we are free to lift off into the painting. Rather than looking into the frame from outside we are immersed within it. On our own flight path in and out of the landscape:

we experience space looping back onto itself

we experience time in separate frames all at once

we experience the Mobius Trip

Constructs - Studies in Biodynamic Painting

In many paintings the viewer remains on the outside looking in. Inspired by traditional Chinese landscape painting where the viewer is invited to enter the landscape with temples and paths proving a place to land within the painting. My goal with this series of studies called “Constructs”, is to create a place to land , or a platform, for the viewer to be immersed within the painting’s abstract layering of saturated colors and water-charged washes.

With multiple platforms one can move through the composition from one to the other changing your perspective within the abstract color field.

Another series studies suspending the platform within the painting, a spring board for landing and moving back and forth through the composition. A visual anchor.

Platform as a portal.

The constructs offer a home base for touring out into the loose and playful washes — harvesting from the biodynamic color fields.

What I Learned from Finger Painting with my Two Year Old

With twenty fingers working together, ten big and ten small, I learned to let go of control. When I started feeling attached to a part of the painting a tiny thumb would inevitably smear across it or a pinky nail would scrape part of it away. After a few deep breaths I finally released my attachment to how I thought the finished painting should look and we had a blast painting together. I hope to remember this freedom as I continue painting.

Artist Haven at Blue Lake Ranch

Blue Lake Ranch Bed and Breakfast outside Durango Colorado is a hidden gem. So hidden my family and I missed the tiny mailbox turnoff almost every time we drove back.  The ponds on their property are buzzing with life compelling me to paint the frenzy of activity: the cattails turning a brilliant lacey white and an assortment of flying and crawling critters busily stashing away food for the winter. If you are an artist, nature lover, or enjoy an aromatic breakfast spread of homemade biscuits and quiches then you too may find this remote getaway enchanting. That is, if you can find it.