Posts tagged #Hid-N-Seek
Creativity as a Way of Life

Teaching others to paint is part of my mission and service to the world.

There are as many ways to paint as there are people — and as many reasons to paint too! Not everyone wants to, or feels the need to make art.

Feeling tense or distracted or unhappy or just plain blah? You can find comfort, joy, and focus when painting.

One of the lessons of the Hide-N-Seek method of painting that I teach is how to use our awareness to look for what we want to see in life.

By looking past appearances and asking better questions, we find a fresh version of the world in which we live.

Gaze at this image of "Creation" to see what you can find within it.

Gaze at this image of "Creation" to see what you can find within it.

Clues surround us all of the time. Looking for them becomes a game we play first on paper and later in our everyday lives.

The game involves a lowering of our expectations to see specific things and a heightened expectation to see more than what initially captures out attention.

When looking at our paintings, we soften our vision and look with eyes of curiosity — wondering what we might see.

The game, when extended to the world around us, requires a lowering of our "drama reflex mechanism", AKA fight or flight.

This is replaced by a deepening of our ability to see, sense, and wonder what gifts and opportunities our circumstances have to offer.

There is more.
There’s always more than initially meets the eye.

Take an internal step back into self. Take a breath, and take a moment, all before responding to the world around us.

Reaction time is not to be noted. Response time is different altogether.

Reactions take no time. They come from the limbic brain, the "reptilian brain".

We’re being called to respond from our neocortex, our “new” brain. It’s time to exercise that part of our brain on a more conscious and regular basis.

I sketched the images below all by sporadically gazing at a canvas giclée of my "Creation" painting hanging in my living room over the course of ten months.

The sketches on the left were seen after Creation was turned 90 degrees clockwise. The sketches on the right were all seen in the format shown above.

The sketches on the left were seen after Creation was turned 90 degrees clockwise. The sketches on the right were all seen in the format shown above.

Play the game with me. Take another look at the painting above. Can you find any of the images? Better yet, do you see any new ones? Please let me know what you find!