Lynette’s Story

The story below is based on a phone conversation that Lynette and I had in September 2011. I audio recorded the conversation, and then listened to it later while creating the painting called “Lynette’s Story”.

“I have always wanted to contribute on a global scale. I have wanted to do Habitat for Humanity for many years. I researched it back in 2004-2005 and the opportunity never really came up.

And India is always a place that I have wanted to go. To experience the culture and the people. It represents spirituality to me. I am super excited to being doing two things that I have wanted to do for so long now.

I want to help people that are in need. And build a home for them because a home is huge for people. Having a home represents stability. And it represents that their family can have a safe place to be. Wanting to work with Habitat for Humanity all goes back to having a sense of stability.

For me, experiencing the loss of my parents by the time I was 20, I didn’t have any real stability. I was on my own and had to fend for myself. I had a little nest egg where I could put some money down to buy an apartment. Having that home, someplace to live, is huge because that grounds you. Just having that grounding home base where your family meets and you eat, and you connect up with your family members. So having a home to call your own for these people is I think is going to give them whatever they need to help their families.

Family for me has always been important, although I haven’t really had a family. So I guess that one of the reasons I really want to do this in particular. Because home and family mean that much to me. That sense of home and that sense of family is for me something that I have always wanted and have never really completely achieved. Yes, I have an apartment. Yes, I can call it home. But if you have family in it, it just means so much more.

It’s that whole ripple effect. We help one family, and then another family, or two other families, might be motivated by that and try to achieve the same thing. It’s also that sense of community. I believe that family and community are a huge thing. What is this going to mean to the family that we’re helping out? Can they start entertaining in this home and with their friends? Will they bring friends over, and influence the people around them as well? This to me could also be a very great outcome of all of this as well. That by building a home we’re influencing all the people in the area as well.

For me contribution has always been important because I know what it’s like when you need help. I know what it’s like when you need support. And contributing and supporting people in need all stems from that. I am not going to provide it for them, but I am going to help them. It speaks to humanity. People need to help each other out. They need to think about other people. It’s a helping hand. It’s really wanting to reach out and lift people up when they need it.

And for me I am just so excited to be doing this. I am so excited to meet the family and just show them that I am really enthusiastic and just really want to help them.

I know that what I am going to be exposed to in India being a third world country is going to be a life changing experience. I don’t know what is going to unfold. It’s going to be really interesting to see what it’s going to be like when I get back. All I know is that people have told me it’s a life changing experience. So, I’m open for it. Bring it on”.

Social Change Institute Series – Painting #2

I attended the Social Change Institute on Cortes Island in June and created a series of 4 paintings. As this video created by GenWhyMedia shows, SCI was both soulful and inspiring.

Painting #2 is called “Collaboration”. Description is below.

According to Mike Rowlands, collaboration will be enhanced when each of us acknowledges that we want to be in control. Even with a background of learning that encourages thinking about organizational structure and shared values, I still come to the table with my personal values, assumptions, and beliefs. So, as I move into new collaborative situations, developing emotional intelligence is a core competency. Being mindful of myself is vital because how I use both my strengths and limitations, will influence how I work with others.

Social Change Institute series – Painting #1

I attended an incredible conference at Hollyhock on Cortes Island in early June. The Social Change Institute (SCI) intended to “gather seasoned and emerging leaders with thinkers and trainers from the change making world”. It was a unique experience for me because it was the first time I have been to a conference where dual roles worked so seamlessly. What I mean is, everyone was both a participant, as well as professional who shared their expertise.

In addition to sharing my abilities as a graphic recorder, I also created 4 paintings over the 5 day conference. I did this as an experiment. Just to see what would happen. And I was totally delighted when, through an auction, the paintings raised enough money for 125 school uniforms for children in Kenya. The connection to Kenya came from James Kamau and I would totally recommend checking out his website to get a sense of the amazing capacity building work he is doing.

In the coming weeks I will be post all four paintings with a brief description. This is the first of the series.

Authentic Self

My challenge at SCI was to be vulnerable and be my most authentic self among a group of strangers. It is all too easy for me to sit back, draw, record, observe, stick to the periphery of the circle, and fall into the role of an outsider looking in. My personal stretch at SCI was discovering and sharing my voice. I painted Authentic Self as a reflection of: showing up, being real, and speaking what is true for me.

Squamish Series I

This is the first painting that I completed in the Squamish Series.

To recap – I will be doing 12 paintings this year based on interviews with community members in Squamish. I am asking about people’s values, passions, views on the environment and how they feel about community development in Squamish.  It is important to note that the interviews are anonymous and confidential. That said, I will provide a bit of demographic information to set the painting into context. As well, I’ll include a portion of the interview that influenced what the painting looks like. At some point next year I’ll have an art show where I bring all of the paintings together for the purpose of talking about their content. If you have questions or comments about the paintings, or about the interviews that influenced them, I would really love to hear from you.

Squamish Series I

Age 40

Yrs in Squamish 6

Sectors – Art & Music, Business, Outdoors Sports

“That is a fundamental problem with Squamish… It’s nobody’s fault or anything. It’s just that it’s laid out in five different communities. And unlike a town of 15,000 that is a bit more central everything is spread out all over the place. So half the time you don’t hear about what is going on until the next day.

The physical layout of the town makes it hard for people to come together as a community outside of their regular lives. Whether that be living in townhouse complex or living in the highlands. When you get home to the highlands after a day of work, you don’t know what your neighbour is doing up the street, because you’re so far away from them. And yet they could be very similar to you and had they been your next door neighbour you might have invited them over for a jam session or whatever.

As frustrating as it is for us to communicate, I think it’s really cool that we have five neighbourhoods with five distinct personalities.

I love promoting and listening to music. And going to music festivals.
I can relate to music. It just speaks to me for whatever reason. I know what it means when I hear a certain note. My passion is really listening to and discovering music.

I think with all the artists and musicians that are in this town, and the demand for music, that this is the place where music has to happen. And I am going to put my heart and soul into making what is here better known. I just want to link up people because there are so many people that don’t know each other in town. I want to help bring the community together through music and concerts”.

The Family Series – reflections on three completed paintings

I need to preface this post by saying that the Family Series is not complete. While I had the chance to record conversations with my mom and dad, my brother and I have not yet had a chance to go through this process together. So there will be a fourth installation at some point in the future. And now that I’ve started this project with my immediate family, I have to say that I would love to extend it to include my aunts, uncles and cousins.

Having said that, it is worth looking at the three paintings that I finished because before I left Ontario mom, dad and I sat down and discussed them. From the beginning it was my intention that the paintings would be used as a way to have talk about our family. I believed this could work because of my experience using painting as  tool in my master’s project. When I started the Family Series I had hoped to create the potential for positive change in my family. I should say, it’s not that I have terrible relationships with my family members. There were two things – 1. I made a list of 121 things about 5 years ago and included on my list was getting to know my parents as people. With my mom having cancer it felt like my window to make this happen was short, and 2. It felt like to me the quality of my relationships was better with my close friends then with my family. That dissonance bothered me. So I wanted to get to know my parents AND hoped that the quality of our relationships could be even better.

It is hard to admit now, because I feel like I should know better, and I thought that these two goals would be accomplished because my parents would change. HA! AS IF! Now that I am writing this down I see how ridiculous this is. I cannot speak for either mom or dad, however I can say for certain that I have changed in really positive ways. I DO know them more as people. As whole people. As people who have had childhoods, amazing family memories, proud moments and challenges. This spoke to me about their hopes, fears and values.

The result from this bigger picture is being able to let go of resentments from my childhood that were holding me back. I came to realize that my relationships with my parents were not as easy as I wanted them to be becaause I was holding onto negative feelings from the past. So in the end, doing this project was a tool for ME to learn about myself and grow. Not only that, as a collection the paintings were a tool for me to sit with my family and share these reflections with them.

The family Series – installment 3

These photos show the painting I completed while listening to the recorded conversation I had with my dad.

About the process – First, I painted the background and then taped off blocks with painting tape in order to create the well defined squares and rectangles. Then, I added the circles by dipping the end of a piece of copper tubing into red paint and dabbing the it onto painting. Last, I outlined all the squares in black paint. The black lines follow the contour of the entire square or rectangle, even including the part underneath that may have been covered up by an additional painted shape.

About the content – As with the previous paintings the paint colours I chose were influenced by my understanding of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Indicator. As with my mom’s painting the green paint is evidence of sequential thinking on my dad’s part. He mentioned to me that when he works as a project manager he does his best to ensure that projects are done on time and on budget. The blue in this painting represents his analytical thinking. This thinking pattern means to me that his strengths include being logical, factual, and technical.

The circles in this painting are an indication of the relationships, and systems of relationships, my dad spoke to me about. Although my dad certainly has relationships in his life, they have a diferent importance to him then to either my mom or I. In our conversation we agreed that he is much more outcome driven (i.e. right steps in the right order) then process oriented (i.e. how people feel as they work towards the outcomes).

The Family Series – installment 2

This is the second installment of the family series.

This second painting represents a conversation I had with myself. Seriously! So that I could create a painting based on my reflections, I sat down with the audio recorder and answered the same questions I asked my mom. It was a challenge because I found that as both the “question asker” and the “question answerer” I had a difficult time asking really good follow up questions.

Still, it was time well spent as learned some interesting things about myself in the process. I learned that the proudest moments I have had im my life are times when I have lived my values. Particularly in instances where someone, or something, was challenging them. I also learned that what I most deeply value in my life is having meaningful authentic connections with people I love.  This is something I know about myself, and yet, it was extremely powerful to hear myself say it.

As with the first painting, the base colours I chose for this painting represent my understanding of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Indicator (HBDI). When I was attending Royal Roads I took the HBDI and discovered that I am predominantly an imaginative thinker followed closely by an interpersoanl thinker. These thinking patterns were given the colours yellow and red when the material was presented to me. Another simiarity with the first painting is how I used circles to show the importance of relationships and systems of relationships in my life.

An obvious difference between the two paintings is that I used a heavy black line in this one that is absent from the first. There is no good reason for this… just artistic freedom in the moment.

Stayed tuned as this painting isn’t done yet. I’ll post further pictures as the series continues.