.png)
Discovering Your Shades
One of the things I never tire of seeing is what happens once people begin mixing colours. Every participant starts with exactly the same three colours, the same canvas and the same amount of time. Yet by the end of the day, every painting is unique.
No one sets out to make it unique. It simply becomes a reflection of the person creating it.
Beyond the Brush
At the beginning, most people stay with the brush. It feels familiar and safe. The first shades emerge simply by mixing the colours together, and for a while there is comfort in doing what feels expected.
Then something begins to change.
People put the brush down. They use their hands instead. Some scratch through wet paint with a sharp tool. Others soften hard edges with their fingertips or move the paint in ways they hadn't imagined at the beginning of the day. No one is told to do this. It happens naturally as curiosity grows.
There is room for sweeping movements and for attention to a small detail. A colour can be explored further, a mark softened or a different tool tried. Each choice offers another way of discovering what feels right to the person making it.
The materials are the same, but each person begins finding their own way of working with them.
Standing Back
The most enjoyable moment comes when people step back from their painting for the first time.
Until then they have been completely immersed in the process, responding one brushstroke at a time. Standing back creates a different perspective. They begin noticing shapes they hadn't intended, colours they hadn't realised they had mixed and something of themselves reflected back from the canvas.
It often comes as a surprise, because the painting somehow feels more like them than they imagined it would.
In some ways maybe life asks us to do the same. We spend so much time living our lives that we rarely pause to notice the picture that is emerging.
Stepping back can help us recognise our own way of seeing, including the parts we overlook when we are busy comparing ourselves with others.
A Collective Masterpiece
At the end of the workshop, when all the paintings are placed together, each brings something of its own to the whole.
Some are bold, others delicate. Some are richly layered, others beautifully simple. Together they become something none of them could become on their own.
Each painting changes how we see the ones beside it.
I've often wondered whether this is also true of organisations, communities and society itself. We spend so much energy encouraging people to think alike, when our ability to see differently helps us understand more of the world we share.
The goal was never to paint like anyone else. It was to discover a way of seeing that could only belong to you, and to notice what that might bring to the whole.
Often, in business and life, we see only a fraction of what people are capable of, simply because they haven't yet discovered it themselves. How much potential do we fail to recognise simply because we've never created the conditions for it to emerge?
This article is part of the series The Experience and The Art of Navigating, an ongoing exploration of how to find our way through uncertain times. If you'd like to read more articles or have future pieces sent straight to you, please follow the link below.
