Every Thursday mid-morning, I head over to my parents for a bit of conversation and coffee.  It’s something I look forward to every week because it’s a good opportunity to find out what they’ve been doing to pass their time.  Long retired now, their time is spent pottering about in the garden, reading books, watching YouTube.

Both my parents are artistic and creative in their own ways, my father is an artist and my mother, despite her claiming otherwise is a seamstress with excellent sewing and design skills.  As Greeks, they also have the added flair of conversation, an appreciation of culture and history usually enjoyed with food and wine.  Despite me not enjoying my childhood, the older I’ve become, the more I’m appreciate my parents and their somewhat at times, different and unique viewpoints.

Viewpoints that befuddle me because they could be so traditional and at odds with current thinking that it’s visionary at the same time.  It’s a weird feeling when you want to disagree but deep down you think that there’s some kernel of truth that you don’t want to admit that you agree.

When I was growing up, my brother and I were challenged to question and not accept things at face value.  We were encouraged to think for ourselves and reason, to explore and delve into what might be sitting behind, background, hidden from view.  We were also encouraged not to think and act like followers instead try to be the ones who set the trends.

When you’re young, you want to be liked and accepted so we never understood this.  The LAST thing you want to do is to be different and stand out. You want to fit in. Be part of the crowd. Do what others do. Copy, imitate and emulate.

Today, my father pulled out a book by Paul Strisik who was a plein air artist with considerable acclaim.  The book was called The Art of Landscape Painting and in it, the artist used the first chapters to share his process of how he painted particular scenes.  Much of it was in black and white because he forces people to not get carried away with the idea of colour and instead think for themselves and their painting as a “concept”.

My dad explained that as an artist, your intention is never to simply paint a blueprint of the scene in front of you – after all, you’re not a photographer, you’re a painter.  You have to use elements of what you see and use references such as light and shades to create your masterpiece.  He lamented that he’s been desperately practicing for years and he still is nowhere near the level he wants to be.

In his book, Paul Strisik says it’s “your conception of the subject” and that’s where your value as an artist is.  It’s not how well you can copy the scene in the exact colours, exact placement of trees, leaves, stones, huts – it’s about what made you take notice of the scene and what you want to communicate emotively.  In his book, there were many demonstrations and in each of them, he started off with a photo of the landscape (the “before” shot) but what he painted as the final piece (“the after” shot) was far removed from the original photo – it was way better.

Where the photo showed a turbulent river flowing over rocks, his final painting was of a serene brook.  You could see what inspired him to create the scene in his own unique way and…get this…. where it doesn’t exist real life!  It’s a scene from his head!

I reasoned that this must be so difficult to do.   To look at the scene in front of you and then to deliberately force yourself and trick your brain to not paint its likeness but to paint what’s in your mind instead!

“I think I have a little bit of impressionism in my work. If I had to categorize myself, I’d have to say impressionist. I’m certainly painting the light, but artists have painted the light for hundreds of years. Most important is that I love nature, and what nature lays before us. It’s a tremendous challenge to take bits of nature and organize them. I’ve taken the feeling of nature. I’ve changed, I’ve enlarged, I’ve removed, I’ve put in to give the feeling, so that you can see nature filtering through human personality.”  – Paul Strisik, interviewed by David Green, Boston Ledger, 1986

That got me thinking about my own work and what makes me sit up and take notice.

The easiest thing in the world is to copy and imitate other people, their works and their styles but ultimately, the end result, is much like that “before” photo.  It’s flat, it’s uninteresting and it’s typical.

Paul’s act of changing, enlarging, removing is really what we should be doing in our own lives as continual learners and explorers.  It’s about seeing what’s in front of you but then making sense of it in your own way and creating something new that generates an emotion or feeling in others that inspires them to do this same.  It’s not about copying, imitating or adding noise nor is it about following trends or best practices. Dare I say it it’s not about building your business or selling your book either.

In a world where our work, industries and professions are changing, our value will be on what new ideas, insights and perspectives we bring to others and how we make them feel.

This is what organisations need and what workers desire.

References:

• The Legacy of Paul Strisik 
• Paul Strisik, Wikipedia
• Paul Strisik 

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