The human brain is a magnificent machine. Among other things, we know that is made up of two hemispheres that together determine the results of everything we do. In her book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor describes what she experienced when her left hemisphere went totally off
line due to a stroke. (You can hear her story in an interview with Oprah HERE.
OUR INSIGHT FROM DR. JILL'S EXPERIENCE
Dr. Jill's awakened awareness can teach us that our left hemisphere chatters to us constantly, actually
telling us what we are experiencing in the external world. Over the course of our lifetime, it collects information and feeds it back to us. If we've been fed wrong information, that information will continue to guide us until we correct it.
As artists, if we depend upon our collection of labels for the world, that information can actually
block how we see. For example, looking at a cast shadow, our labeling system will say to us "dark shadow", so we will paint a dark shadow without examining the degree of darkness or the gradation within that shadow or the softness or hardness if its edges or textures that might be within it.
But Dr. Jill teaches us that if we pay attention to what we are thinking, we can change how we see the world by
changing our brain chatter.
By paying attention to our thoughts, we can redirect our attention to what's really in that
shadow. By doing that, we will know how to express it with paint.
Place a simple object in front of you. Look at it. Then switch your attention to what your thoughts are
telling you about it. Are they telling you what it is? Or they telling you its color, or its shape? Now, try to turn off those thoughts (yeah, I know: hard to do, but do it anyway). Now, describe to yourself what your eyes are seeing. Be careful that your thoughts are really describing what you are seeing, not your old labels.
How many colors are you seeing? What are they? Are they changing as you eye scans the object? How many shapes? What are
edges doing? How many values? And on and on.
If you do this exercise for a few minutes every day, you will be surprised how it will enhance your painting
skills.
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