4. Make Decisions
Big 3 Ideas from this episode:
Everything Starts with a Dot
3 Pillars of a Creative Life:
1. Create an Atmosphere (last episode);
2. Make Decisions (this one); and
3. Walk the Path (upcoming)
Making decisions can help you move to the next level. Have courage and make more decisions! The more decisions make, the more progress we make.
Do You Like Making Decisions?
Many artists - and people in general - artist’s are people, too - say they have trouble making decisions.
But that is not what I see - artist’s make decisions all day, every day. What color to use, what shape to make, what material works.
But if you do want to make easier, better decisions with less confusion, I have something to offer today.
Wassily Kandinsky said, “Everything starts with a dot.”
And every dot is a decision.
This concept is at the intersection of Art and Nature.
Because so many artists say they want to work more in tune with nature. So. How does Nature make decisions?
I’ve spent a little time thinking about this.
How does Nature make decisions?
Does Nature make decisions? Every moment IS a choice - What prey to follow, what direction to turn, where to make a nest. For nature - animals, plants, even minerals - it’s instinct from evolutionary learning and mutations. In the bones, in the DNA, in the behavior.
But we can learn a lot from this.
In sumi-e ink class, my teacher, Lois Yoshida always said.
Paint with your body, not your brain.
(Or at least, I hear that phrase in her voice. I write in on my studio wall.)
When I can remember to think less, to follow my instinct and use my chi, my natural flow and movement to make marks, my marks come out much less stilted, more … natural.
So this big concept of Nature may be able to teach us a few things about making decisions.
Paintings I talk about in this episode:
Here are 10 ways Nature Makes Decisions:
Nature isn’t confused. Nature KNOWS what to do.
Nature adapts to surroundings without hesitation.
Nature doesn’t experience Impostor Syndrome.
Nature uses what is at hand.
Nature moves and grows around obstacles.
Nature never struggles.
Nature attracts rather than convinces - it uses attraction rather than force to sell its value. Scent, color attract us.
Nature knows itself.
Nature cooperates in cycles and systems with itself, by recognizing and using patterns.
Nature does the next right indicated thing.
I read a recent study by Fredrickson and Levenson, Kaplan and Kaplan, Maller, et all.
About the power of watching mundane natural environments - not even being IN them, just seeing them.
People were able to replenish deplete attentional resources, reduce stress, enhance concentration and promote recovery from stress - and felt more apt to help others.
And this it just mundane nature - not to mention the Nature of the Sublime - that state of awe we experience in the face of the glory of a rainbow or the beauty of a mountain peak, a vastness that dwarfs the spectator,
Awe allows us to experience highly intense emotion, leading to increased feelings of spirituality, oneness, vast and overwhelming feelings, but also the feeling of smallness and fear, connectedness.
The Nature of the Sublime raise our mood significantly MORE than mere mundane nature. and people have a MUCH higher interest in helping others.
So literally, we can learn something from nature - how to not only make decisions, but make BETTER decisions that are more beneficial to our communities.
So whenever you feel decision overload - take a walk, visit a tree, sit in the grass, walk in the woods or on the beach.
Nature never struggles,
yet there is no wild bounty it does not bring forth.
- i Ching
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Welcome to Episode 4 - Make Decisions.
Let’s talk about making decisions
This is important because the more awareness we have around our decisions the more success and growth.
We All make decisions all day everyday.
No wonder we’re exhausted….
Blue or black? Canvas or panel? Oil or acrylic, light or dark?
Paper or plastic!
Most of the time we don’t even know we are making decisions, and this is the way it should be.
Our brain don’t like confusion, so whenever we can just do things the easy way, the obvious way, the way that is already grooved into our psyche and mind space, that is what we do.
Our brains love certainty and pattern and order…
But we also need stimulations, learning, creativity.
We need both - flow and order. Order AND Flow.
This is what I’m going to talk about today - MY three Pillars for a Creative Life - 1, I talked about last week - Create an Atmosphere in your brain, your studio and your business the way you want it - so you can grow.
#2 Make Decisions
#3 - Next week, I’ll talk about Walking the Path.
Let’s start by asking yourself two questions:
Where here have been the points in your life where you made important decisions.
Think back on those decisions and where they took you.
And the second question is, where are those times in your life when you did not decide and where did those decisions or confusions or not making a decision take you.
I don’t think one is any better than the other one but it feels like the awareness is important part.
This is how we gain wisdom - Looking back to see what drives us.
The abstract painter Kandinsky called “Inner Necessity.”
His abstract work it is all about exploring the space inside his mind. His motto his mantra was inner necessity.
This concept of inner necessity. He had to paint what he painted because he was expressing a feeling or a concept that was deep in him inside him that did not have a way to be expressed in words.
He painted around the early 1900s through the middle of the century, and he was a great teacher too. He taught at the Bauhaus school in Weimar Germany before World War II. He influenced many other painters, too. He also expressed his art through dance, theater, music. He was a true renaissance man.
Kandinsky said, “Everything starts with a dot.”
He should know he painted a lot of dots!
And when he says “Everything starts with a dot,” he is also saying, “every dot is a decision.”
Today I wanna talk about how this concept of making decision works for creative artists and creative entrepreneurs.
First I’ll tell you a story then - I’ll tell you what I’ve learned in this process and how it can help you.
I don’t even remember what year it was 2005, I was living in Seattle writing about food for now defunct but much beloved magazine in Portland called Northwest Palate. I was assigned to go to New York City to attend A dinner at the famous James Beard house with a Yakima chef Mike Davis who was cooking there. I couldn’t turn it down. It was an amazing trip I felt like I had arrived in my own little imaginary world by taking on this job at this famous iconic venue. I was pretty broke but I managed to scrape together the plane fare and when I got to New York it was pouring down rain.
I was staying in a tiny rundown hostel on Minetta Street, All I could afford.
I went to hang out with the chefs in the basement kitchen of the James beard house. They had stuffed all of their beautiful Yakima valley ingredients including asparagus and grapes and wines and meats into crates they shipped with them on the planes. They created an incredible dinner paired with Yakima Valley wines. I can still taste that lobster bisque they handed out in tiny cups as we stood sipping Yakima valley Chardonnay in one of the drawing rooms of the James Beard house.
For the next two days I wandered New York in the rain. Art and food were intertwine for me and the art of food was leading me to the art of art.
I loved art but did not make it back then. I was in complete confusion and indecision. I really wanted to make art, but writing was what I had chosen and fallen into and what paid the bills. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but whenever I had an extra moment, I went to galleries and museums, drew and read about art.
So on this trip to NYC, I made the most of it.
I went to the metropolitan Museum of Art I went to MOMA went to the Frick I went to the Guggenheim. All for the first time.
And all in three days. It was a transformative experience.
And then at the end with just one day left of my trip I made a pilgrimage to the greenwich Village, I walked past the White Horse Tavern where Dylan Thomas drink, the tiny house at 75 1/2 Bedford Street the narrowest house in New York City, at just 9 1/2 feet wide.where Adna Saint Vincent Malay lived, and the Chelsea Hotel. We’re Dylan Thomas lived for a while, and other so many famous artists live like Williams Burroughs Allen Ginsberg Tennessee Williams Jack Kerouac Diego Rivera Robert Mapplethorpe well I’m de Kooning Jasper Johns Robert crumb lived, was made famous by Andy Warhol and his factory of artists in today would be called influencers.
I walked in out of the rain to the lobby dripping wet. It was empty, but the walls were filled with huge colorful paintings so I Dried myself off and considered it to be one of my museum trips.
I just spent time looking at these works And taking in the vibe, peering at the old staircase wondering what the rooms were like, feeling the ghosts of all the past artists, picturing Kerouac bounding down the stairs or Dylan Thomas stumbling up them
After a while A guy walked down the stairs, a young handsome man with curly dark hair he just kind of calmly wandering around the lobby sat down picked up a magazine opened a book, stood up pace back-and-forth.
We kind of eyed each other for a minute and then I said hi I’ve always been like that I’ll talk to anyone.
We started talking he said he lived in the building and I asked what are you doing down here in the lobby then. He said I’m working on a new painting.
I said, OKAYY He said. upstairs and I prep the canvas so I have to wait for it to dry a bit open the windows to let the fumes dissipate.
What are you gonna paint I asked?
I’m not sure yet.
We talked about art and music, the history of the Chelsea little bit but I didn’t wanna seem like some wide eyed tourist so I tried to keep my cool. He said he was making paintings for a show in Amsterdam, and he had connections there, so we talked about the Dutch renaissance for a while.
And then he said would you like to go out for coffee. I said oh yes that would be delightful.
It felt so 19th-century.
And when he said next is what I’m getting to today he said Great can I meet you in an hour here?
I have to go up and make a mark on this canvas.
I have to make a mark on this canvas.
I said sure
he left and went up the stairs and
I wandered off into a sort of silver New York City still dripping with rain, it felt clean.
I came back in about an hour and we went to have coffee and I said
I’m so curious, what is your studio like?
So we went back to the Chelsea and he allowed me to visit his apartment, it was so small.
The room seemed about 10 x 16 with a tiny kitchen, and bathroom, a small fridge and a hot plate, a long one a bed a desk and a dresser.
A straight back wooden chair. And on a long one wall 8 to 10 huge canvases 5 feet tall by 7 feet wide or so all stacked leaning against the wall.
He flipped through them one by one, each one a bold, colorful figure or animal, some holding toys or shapes.
Beautiful work
And on the wall the painting he had been working on. It had one mark on it a short line better the third of the way up the canvas.
His finished work was bright strange odd with simple shapes, haunting and amusing joyful yet somehow dark.
I don’t even remember his name. But this brings me to my point today.
Wassily Kandinsky said everything starts with a dot.
Like this artist Kandinsky realized that every mark we make creates a new relationship.
The relationship I had with this new friend was short, but it was a dot on my canvas, it gave me something to think back on and admire his process and his place how he had created an atmosphere in his life where he could create art even though he had such a small space.
And the dot that he made on his canvas created a relationship between the the mark and the space of the canvas
whatever Mark is made next, whatever line and shape you make is a response to that original dot metaphorically every choice we make is a new doc on the landscape on the surface of our canvas.
I’m reading a book right now called the big bang of numbers how to build the universe using only math. By Manil Suri.
I want to talk about numbers in a future episode, but right now I just want to recommend this book for artists who hate math. It’s a story about dots lines shapes numbers and how math is a language to explore these ideas. If you read the book Flatland, you will like this book.
But on another level this idea of making a dot is about decisions.
When you make decisions on your canvas when you make new strokes lines confidently that Mark is a record of your confidence.
Like in Japanese and Chinese calligraphy, you start practicing making circles - the Enzo.
my Sumi ink teacher Lois, taught me the energy of my body shows in my marks. These are ancient concepts, but we need to be reminded of them. Our feelings and emotions come through in our Marckx. even if you don’t know what the next move will be, like my friend he did not know what he was going to paint next he explored the process as he went, but he understood that every mark he made was going to create a new relationship a new space on the canvas.
My painting teacher Kimberly Trowbridge encouraged us to make confident decisions on the canvas and
we feel paralyzed by perfectionism - when we have to make decisions we ask ourselves what is the next move, it has to be perfect what if I fail?
which brings me to a counteracting idea called pentimento.
It’s an Italian term that means I repent
when you see paintings where artists have painted over previous work and the previous lines shine through or show through when artist have changed their minds but still leave a record of what is before that is pentimento.
For instance in in the Van Eyck painting the Arnolfini wedding, x-rays have revealed previous decisions, a hand in a completely different position.
The painter painted over this completely, but sometimes as paintings age, paint fades, these original marks show through.
To me it just makes the painting more interesting, more texture, more depth.
And in fact many painters use this as a technique, for instance Jenny Saville’s drawings of Velasquez painting Las Meninas,
Jenny Savile draws lines over lines of her lines she repents over and over. I wonder if her thematic idea is about this young girl and how other people are forming her life for her. Saville creates many layers of lines and we see every one. So when we make a mark, we make a decision.
And every decision lives within relation to what has come before.
And sometimes I can feel paralyzing.
But when you think about the process of painting and compare it to the process of business or living our lives on a daily basis and we live in the present moment we are always taking action in the present moment, we’re looking and thinking about the past and then we’re hoping towards the future
All of our action is taken in the present moment, when we have confidence and we use our whole body,
We get some paint on the canvas, then we can feel good about that choice that decision that Mark.
And the next step is to do as my first painting teacher José Parramon suggested,
step back have a cup of coffee, create some time in space to let that decision settle, whatever your process is, fast or slow, you are making decisions and then remember pentimento.
We can repent we can cover it over we can erase so we can let the first decision show through as we create our art, as we create our lives and our businesses the layering the shining through the glow from previous confident decisions is what creates the texture.
This is what I offered to you today but this process is really the same in your business we are so comfortable doing this on a canvas making a mess covering it over starting over feeling and moving on learning as we go.
In business we try something new create a website create a post a product a class and newsletter we put it out there we make a mark a confident decision then standby back with your coffee take a look.
Then create a new layer, shift and change it make a new decisions create the next rich texture of meaning that is unique to your art your business your life so you can move forward make decisions with confidence
You can always repent later.
Like a lot of visual thinkers, I like to create little mental models in my mind - visual tools to help me conceptualize different ideas. I’ve created one called the Decision Pyramid that help me think about decisions.
So when you take that dot - and every dot is a decision. You take that dot and think of it as a the number 1 - a SEED, then you start thinking about something, a new idea, a new project. Something that can grow into something else. A seed. Step two the decision pyramid is another dot - the number 2, and 2 can represent Duality. So you have a seed, an idea. And then our brains usually present us with the opposite - oh, you can’t do that - the duality - the yin and yang of the idea - you start arguing with yourself. And this can go back an forth for days, weeks or years!
But if you complete the Decision pyramid by eating a dot on the top, # 3 - and 3 can represent Focus, or Fire, or Creativity - it is the result of 1 + 2. If 3 is based on your Values - your Inner necessity, as Kandinsky called it, then your decision usually will be clear.
1 is the seed. 2 is duality, and the top of the pyramid, 3 is your Focus. And you make a decision. Once that decision is made, based on your values, your inner necessity - then that dot, that point of the pyramid, that fulcrum, becomes a NEW SEED of a new decision - and this is the way we build a ladder, a staircase, a pathway of stepping stones up and forward.
Remember - it isn’t all the options from the seed, or duality that are important - it is the fulcrum, the focus, the DECISION that is important. When you make it - you can go on to something new. And grow to the next stage.
I work with my clients to develop and discover their own values and pillars
ideas and thoughts that can drive your work and business forward.
One client guiding principles of
Pillar’s is “start before you’re ready.”
Which is so great it goes perfectly with this concept of making decisions.
No one knows when they’re ready being ready is a thought you can decide to think
in the feeling of readinessWell come from that thought I am ready.
So for my client, starting before you’re ready helps her make that first decision that first mark on her business to step into the arena to build her own confidence through action
make decisions make a mark step back have a coffee make another mark practice pentimento and build up that rich texture of your life .
and I remembered when my friend Winnifred Brumsickle the painter and perfume first started painting she tells his hilarious story about holding the brush above the canvas and shaking and I can picture this hilarious look on her face and then she shows how she made a mark with that color almost like stabbing at the canvas and
that’s how it felt for me too, when my teacher Kimberly Trowbridge used to say as I puttered around getting things in order adjusting my colors cleaning everything up lining up my brushes perfectly
she would look at me fold her arms and just say get some paint on that canvas Shannon.
And I decided OK I’m just going to make a mark just get some paint on the canvas you can always repent later.
paint with your body not your brain to relax and move with your whole body like a dancer this idea of duende that the poet Federico Garcia Lorca the poet talks about it’s the demon inside it’s the energy inside of the dance,
So when we make marks when we make decisions when we make any moves in our lives we are tapping into that life force that drives that emotion and this is why Artist can be so great at business
because we have that connection to the emotional side we know that we can make decisions from this place that will make us feel good and we are passing that energy and that beauty in that love onto the world.
