Reflections on art and leadership

I use my art to reflect an artist and a senior manager in the financial services industry. I notice that the deeper I understand myself the more I succeed to impact others; in both art and work.

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

A new concept : Decomplexify

Both in personal life and at work I have a clear preference to understand the topics I work on or that are important to me. Whenever I do not understand issues or what I am yin’s to achieve, I will dive deeper.
In many cases his is good, and for example at work it helps to solve issues, learn how things really work, coach others and ensure targets are met. In personal life it means I am always interested in how hints work, always assuming that whenever things go wrong it is linked to my lack of understanding or capabilities.
That way, over time, I have learned there are no easy solutions to complex issues. And by default I have an allergy for people oversimplifying the challenges...heading straight for disaster.

The challenge
But, where in many cases this is useful, it can harm in other situations. Too much focus on detail might blind your high level judgement. It is easy to get stuck in a war, yet at some point to discover you have been distracted from more important goals. Or, you lose your audience when using too many words to explain where you want to go... influencing people sometimes equines ability to illustrate your point in 3 sentences.

A House half Built


In art...

The same applies for art. It is great to master complex subjects and compositions. But risk is you overcomplicate the painting, continue too long and losing expression.

The concept
In this series of paintings I force myself to be bold. Strong colors and large brushes prevent me from too much detail. Also limiting the colors to primary and very strong secondary colors, where key 
shapes are made with black and white. Still building on he earlier concept  SubconsciousPower,where I eliminate my ratio and force myself to dive into my feelings.
Roof of my mouth
Finally it is important to realize that research shows that a) making 100 paintings in short timeframe , gives way better art works than b) working one month on one art work. This has to do with the fact that too much focus on making things perfect drives us to putting too much elements into one art work. And with that losing power and ending up with a rational compromise complexified painting.


Kangaroo in the
Desert
What were the results?
I already made quite a few. And I threw away quite some that did not meet the standards, often because they were too rational, too much designed.
Find some examples below and feel free to comment which ones you like most...