The What Goes Around Blog

La Piscine

As an untrained splosher of paint – I get frustrated, a lot. The desire I have to attempt to bring a vision either from my mind or from real life, onto paper, is limited and often completely thwarted through not really knowing how to work the materials I am using. But I enjoy the process of trying – and sometimes something works – to an extent at least.

Whilst staying in Cagnes sur Mer this summer, water was all around us. The beach in particular, and the pool, featured a lot on this stage of our trip. Water water everywhere. It looks tantalising as the sun flicks and shines off it, and I thought I’d have a go at trying to paint it.

Rather than try to copy water – I played with the idea of a swimming pool in my mind, La Piscine. I did briefly think about calling this post Piscine About, thankfully I abandoned that idea. Anyway – here’s what I came up with after about three hours of dabbing, blotting, drying and mixing. The act of releasing myself from ‘what I think this should look like’, regularly proves to be a challenge, and an enjoyable one at that.

I subsequently had another go, this time putting some background colour on the paper first (a mix of white and windsor violet). I think this second attempt is just a mess – I failed to create much contrast between the shades of blue, and the violet doesn’t do anything for me either. Carole suggested I keep it and maybe use it as a background for something else. I might play with some of the travel ephemera I brought back to France and see if I can overlay anything interesting on here.

Both pictures are 24 x 32 cm on 270 g/m2 French water colour paper.

Here is La Piscine, framed and ready to go to its new owner.

The Point of the Journey

We have been travelling around France, basing ourselves in Paris, Lyon, Clermont Ferrand, Avignon and Cagnes sur mer. It’s a lovely adventure, visiting places for the first time and revisiting some favourites too.

As we travelled, I’m reminded of Kurt Schwitters – who sometimes used bus tickets (and other bits and pieces you inevitably pick up when you travel) in his art. I began to think about using a collage of our various tickets to try and represent our journey.

I figured I would try and cut shapes from tickets then try and match them all up into a perfect fitting jigsaw of travel. I sat at the table in our apartment in Clermont Ferrand and began. I cut the first shape – easy peasy. I began to cut more shapes and quickly realised that this was proving much more tricky than I first imagined. The light was poor and I had a small pair of scissors; the harder I tried – the poorer the fit between the pieces became. I cut and fiddled and positioned and repositioned, getting nowhere.

What you see here is the result of about four hours work – four hours! There’s really not much more to say about this scrap of work except that it really brought home to me the notion of ‘the point of the journey is not to arrive’. This odd endeavour has left me with a big stack of travel junk which I plan to revisit and try to create some kind of collage/mixed media work with. For now though – I need a break from bus and train tickets.

Creative Leadership – Essential Reading #4

A brief review of Creativity Inc.

Reminder: This is a short series of book reviews. The four books in this review series are all about creativity, love, art and leadership (at least that’s what they inspire in me). Separately – each one is a super read. Together – they make up the motherlode. If you are looking for insight and inspiration, I strongly recommend you acquire, and read all four. I’m reviewing the four books in the order they came to me.

First up was 101 Things to Learn in Art School by Kit White – a gift to me from the lovely Carole.

Next came The Year Without Pants by Scott Berkun – a recommendation to me from the lovely Heather.

The third book is Steal Like An Artist – by Austin Kleon.

The fourth and final book in this wonderful quartet is Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace. This book was a gift to me from Neil Morrison.

Creativity Inc. is a really well written story about how Pixar came into being, and at first survived, then thrived. The book is shot through with references to many of the famous films that Pixar has produced, which lends the story an engaging familiarity, and it’s the observations about how to get good work done that really resonate most for me.

There are some excellent ‘Proceed Until Apprehended’ type approaches to problem solving.

‘If we allow more people to solve problems without permission and if we tolerate (and don’t vilify) their mistakes, then we enable a much larger set of problems to be addressed.’

I also really enjoyed reading about people, particularly senior management, getting familiar with the notion that many opportunities and problems are beyond their sight. Getting over yourself and getting comfortable with cooperating and collaborating are essential requirements for a thriving business.

‘I’m an advocate for humility in leaders. But to be truly humble, those leaders must first understand how many of the factors that shape their lives and their businesses are – and will always be – out of sight.’

There’s a fantastic, brief section at the end of the book with loads of snippets and hints, reminders about what good work looks and feels like. When I first spotted this – I read it and wondered if doing so might somehow negate the need to go through the whole book. In fact – reading the snippets first just served to make me more interested in the whole story.

Indiviadually, each of these four books will enhance your approach to cocreating great work. Together – I think they really are an excellent mix of creativity and leadership. Essential reading.