Last weekend I attended a business school reunion. There are many wonderful reason why I love process painting but when I talk to my classmates I like to highlight the way that process painting enhances intuition. I define intuition as things we know but we can't explain in words how we know it. In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell defines it as "thinking without thinking" and gives examples of experts who have amazing skills but can't seem to put into words how they do it. Gladwell says that it takes 10,000 hours to develop this level of expertise.
All humans have the capacity to do this kind of intuitive knowing. We may not have specialized training of the experts, but we do have many tens of thousands of hours of experience living our own life. So we all have intuitive knowledge that we bring to every day living. The problem is that many of us have been trained to discount what we can't explain or describe . As a result, we learned to ignore our intuition instead of listening to it. Process painting is a remedy for that.
In process painting, we practice listening to our intuition and doing whatever it says, even if does't make sense. After all, what harm can it do if a tree trunk purple instead of brown? In the safety of the painting studio, we ask our logical brain to shut up and go along for the ride. Little by little we get better at recognizing those little tugs of intuition. The voice that says, "Put a green squiggle here" or "Paint a big black X there." It doesn't matter what the painting looks like so we might as well listen to the intuition and see where it leads. And time after time, it leads to interesting places. It doesn't always turn out as expected but, more often than not, it is worth the journey.
If you are like me, after a while, you start to notice that same tug of intuition in other parts of your life. Now that you can hear your intution, you can tap into your own wisdom in a new way. You may not want to follow it as uncritically as you do in painting but, thanks to process painting, your logical brain is now aware of what your intuition is telling you.
All humans have the capacity to do this kind of intuitive knowing. We may not have specialized training of the experts, but we do have many tens of thousands of hours of experience living our own life. So we all have intuitive knowledge that we bring to every day living. The problem is that many of us have been trained to discount what we can't explain or describe . As a result, we learned to ignore our intuition instead of listening to it. Process painting is a remedy for that.
In process painting, we practice listening to our intuition and doing whatever it says, even if does't make sense. After all, what harm can it do if a tree trunk purple instead of brown? In the safety of the painting studio, we ask our logical brain to shut up and go along for the ride. Little by little we get better at recognizing those little tugs of intuition. The voice that says, "Put a green squiggle here" or "Paint a big black X there." It doesn't matter what the painting looks like so we might as well listen to the intuition and see where it leads. And time after time, it leads to interesting places. It doesn't always turn out as expected but, more often than not, it is worth the journey.
If you are like me, after a while, you start to notice that same tug of intuition in other parts of your life. Now that you can hear your intution, you can tap into your own wisdom in a new way. You may not want to follow it as uncritically as you do in painting but, thanks to process painting, your logical brain is now aware of what your intuition is telling you.
 | This painting was an interesting exercise in turning off my logical mind and letting my intuition take charge. It started with the idea of peacock, which turned into the turkey. Next I felt the urge to paint flowers, they look like poppies to me. Then a dog showed up. Chris Zydel, my teacher, says, "Trust the brush!" I trusted the brush to paint me a dog and I love how he is standing, even though I could have never done that on purpose. Finally, the path appeared, although neither animal seems to be going anywhere. |
Step by step the painting appeared. There was no plan. I still don't know what it means. But the painting got painted and I feel a deep connection to what showed up. A reminder that the point of process painting is not to explain the painting but to stay in touch with the experience of making it. Hooray for intuition!
RSS Feed
