New style for the Subconscious Power concept

The Subconscious Power concept aims to get in a sort of flow, work in a high pace and then create a very complex composition that still shows clear harmony. The idea is to shut down my rational filters; little voices in my brain that tell me to stop, not take a risk of ruining what has already been made, go for simple compositions, reduce the number of colors, etc.

Until now I worked with specific mixes of acrylic paint, medium and water; on a wet surface in order to force myself to create large strokes, work rapidly and accept to let go of rational control, the desire to directly create an aestetic composition.
At the same time I had been working on large amounts of drawings for the Creative Spam project where I post (until now close to 200) drawings in Amsterdam for anyone to find and take home. With these drawings I have also been building my 'vocabulary of shapes and colors', which has become now part of the natural language I use when painting.
And for the La Valise Noire concept I created several drawings based on experiences, darker thoughts and sending it then in the black suitcase.

For a long time I have been a bit hesitant to use oil paint again. In general it is quite difficult to work with (meaning I did not yet fully master it to use it completely organically) and therefore would be difficult to get in a sort of flow when I would still be thinking of 'how to actually put the paint on the linen'.

Recently I decided to engage with the challenge; I bought some large surfaces to paint on, completed again my set of oil paint colors, and brought them to my apartment in Paris where there is lots of light. And one morning I just started; I had prepared how I would work, installed all materials and then just followed my brush. I introduced one break to go out for a walk and then came back. It lead to the painting you see attached.

So, am I happy with the result ? Not sure yet, will make a few more of these pqintings and see how it works. Not even sure if it is ready actually; which is part of the regulare torture an artist faces... Had some very positive feedback from friends who visited, but some others made no comment at all...well in the end the only reference for whether this is the right art work is...me. As my friend  and much more experienced artist Frederik beerbaum said to me some time ago: "95 % of the people have no clue what you are doing, so only you can be the reference of what is good". Well, I'm not sure yet, guess we will see in the coming weeks.

Previous articles on Subconscious Power:
The way of making the art works
Freezing experiment in the snow

La Valise Noire (6) graveyard of projected guilt

In this article you find several drawings I made for the La Valise Noire concept.
A few questions I asked myself.

Follow my feeling
and adrenaline

1. The objective was to visualise my dark behaviour and related guilty feelings. How did that influence my thoughts on that dark behaviour and thinking...
I have now made several drawings. I would think of some behaviour and specifically think of someone I might have hurt with that behaviour. It is interesting to phrase like that, as I am not sure I actually hurt someone in all of these cases. In some cases it would for example not (yet) be visible to others, and still drawing away my energy. In other cases I now wonder if others would see what I did as 'a big thing'. Basically I realised that I feel guilty based on my own values, and the way I project those on my own behaviour and that of others. And not speaking my mind on these topics or not expressing that guilt makes me digest it multiple times, and with every digestion it grows and touches me more.

Mother fighting Beatrice

2. Does it actually work to send the images into the black suitcase, reducing the guilty feelings and the loss of energy ?
In short, yes it helps dealing with dark behaviour and thoughts (at least for as long as I am now working on this project). Then I wondered why it actually seems to work. Explanations could be:
(i) I tell myself it should work, so it works. Basically the placebo effect. Well, that would by itself not be a problem, "no better person to manipulate than yourself"
(ii) letting go of negative images releases the pressure and removes the negative feeling. This is a bit like elements from the Neuro Linguistic Programming, where you visualise your negative thoughts and send them into the distance.
(iii) giving the dark behaviour and the 'victims' attention makes me feel like I have respected and accept the related lesson(s). I do accept the thought that I can not do everything right, and I can not always prevent others from being hurt. Important is the respect and the fact that I learn from my behaviour. This would allow me to 'accept' my failures and think I have suffered and learnt enough to respect the other person.

Storm surrounding
silent creation

(iv) just a coincidence or correlation; when starting the project I was feeling unstable and it would be logical that after some time I would feel a bit more relaxed than before, and maybe in some time the pressure will go up again.
(v) the guilty feeling is not the real cause (bit related to the previous point) and there is another element driving my reflections; earthly powers impacting my well-being, work related pressures impacting my other observations, finally getting blessed by God, escaping in my drawings (creating a different focus, distracting my thoughts), adding structure to my art and expression, etc. Some being more exceptional than others, but intentionally would not want to rule any of it out.


Basically makes me feel I should:
- focus on existing theory and research (psychology, philosophy, etc.)
- maybe try this experiment with other people (to improve statistical relevance).

Behaviour shadowing
parental love

3 In which way does this relate to leadership

Yes, I have avoided linking this project to leadership, and anyone is welcome to comment. I do feel that it makes some elements more clear to me:

a. if we can not guide ourselves, how could we guide others. Being aware of our own dark side is important to more objectively see what is happening and which actions are required. If we are not aware we risk basing our approach on perceptions > based on feelings that can be partly accurate and partly resulting from our dark side and how they filter the information that comes in.

b. Coach others; I have observed in coaching/helping other people it helps to understand the functioning of dark sides; clearly addressing the right behaviour, helping someone explore which behaviour is less functional and which elements need to be addressed, being able to provide metaphors for what is happening (will share some of those in one of the following articles)c. Be a role model for others in not-hiding-from-the-dark. Accept and understand behaviour, showing others it is human to have certain not so good behaviour, to look beyond the guilt, to look forward and make the best of it and not let it stand in the way.

Feeling versus 
risk of losing

d. Not letting other peoples negative behaviour reduce your energy level; as a leader you generally need a good energy level (people do not tend to massively follow people who are complaining and show negative behaviour). Remaining positive and constructive and reasonably balanced is key in getting teams have confidence and trust in their manager.

Well, guess those were just 3 questions and my quick replies. Anyone with other questions or wishing to challenge some of these ideas is welcome.

At the end of this I was looking at the right name for this article, and I saw the title of the below image; that is actually what La Valise Noire is: 

a graveyard of project guilt


>> link to the original La Valise Noire concept

graveyard of projected guilt

Surrealist Self Portrait - La Valise Noire

Another surrealist self portrait I made last weekend. Interesting to see what is being created when drawing a line and just observing what shapes are being created. Again different patterns show up, some things more clear to me than others.

Things I recognise: my face, tired eye with tears, moon in shape of a child's face, a swan, someone diving in deep water reaching out of the water, an erupting flower, a woman with closed eyes, and more :)

See also for more background the La Valise Noire concept

La Valise Noire (3)

This weekend overheard two writers in an interview, each with an interesting quote:

About identifying a very personal subject of her writing the woman said:
it was the subject that is so close to me that I couldn't see it anymore
Guess this happens with more topics and issues; they get so much part of our being and sensing that we actually stop recognising them.

From another writer:
what evokes your fear is also what attracts you - being afraid of hights implies actually that you would like to jump
Actually, having a bit of fear of hights I realised this actually might be true; whenever I am near a high open window I feel fear; and basically as I can see myself jumping down.

I decided to make self portraits the coming time, drawing shapes that just come to my mind, trying to see which patterns and shapes will appear and try to interpret what they say about the areas that are so close to me. One I started to make this weekend and is shown above, interesting patterns I see, and so many details appear when just following the thin line created by the pen. Enough food for thought.

Next article with cartoon on La Valise Noire

Fw: La Valise Noire (2)

I had quite some interesting discussions this week about this new concept, and I had quite some different reactions.
One conversation I had today with Frederik Beerbaum, another artist with much more experience but with the same interests in philosophy and the role of art in life.
He had a few interesting comments that made me think and I would like to document them here.

One of the new drawings this week for La Valise Noire.
I would say the two silhouettes at the top would represent my children.

One reflection:
We have different force fields at work inside us, made of areas that we do not understand, creating tension. This tension requires us to release the related subjects frequently in order to reduce pressure. For an artist this can be through the process of painting.

I very much like this concept. In fact I tried to translate this to the concept of La Valise Noire; by making the drawing I bring the escaping images into the light, they become part of the explicit part of my unknown, and then get sent back into the darkness of the black suitcase. This would also support the idea that it helps to reduce the force fields if we know more of the forces inside us. At the same time we will never be able to know all, which is also good; if we could explain everything in our lives we would reduce the magic of life to a set of mechanical formulas. This also relates to the start of the book I found with the title 'La valise noire', where the writer says: 'as our images and thoughts are the result of an area we don't understand we can never see the full truth. And despite that we always succeed to convince ourselves that our opinion is the right one, the only way to see it'. Well, that's a very free translation.

Frederik also had a nice poem of Dutch poet Gerrit Achterberg that he quoted (sorry quoting in Dutch):
O vrome vuur
Breng in mij over
Uwen uur en tover
Ik ben een lege schuur
Een lover
Een landweg in het middaguur
Een afgezette passagier
Een in beslag genomen koffer
Offerdier

He also referred to a nice book from Mello Ponti elaborating on the value of painting. He is part of the phenomenological stream of philosophers ( such as Kant, Heidegger etc.). The book is called 'oeil et esprit' (eye and spirit). Will definitely look this up when I'm in Paris.(issued by Galimar 1964)

This exchange of ideas comes back to the purpose of communicating; it helps to verify and enrich our own view of reality. And it brings lots of inspiration, especially for me when I talk to people that are passionately exploring the concepts of life, such as Frederik.

Next article with reflections on La Valise Noire

La Valise Noire

Explore your dark side, as it enriches the colors on the light side. Just make sure you do come back out of the dark.

I observe that there are moments when the darker patterns inside me take over; when for example something that started as inspiring threatens to become sort of destructive. Personally I experience this with alcohol; by itself drinking some wine helps to open the mind, even sometimes really supports getting into a highly productive flow, getting more in touch with my feelings, and reduce the influence of my ratio that wants to remain too much in control. But in the not so frequent occasions that I drink more and where there is a more sensitive context I can actually start showing behavior that would normally be corrected by my mind. And then it can ultimately damage the experience, a relationship or my self-image.

I think we all have our natural patterns, desires and dysfunctional behaviors. We can try to stay away from it, we can try to push them away or ignore them. In the end I think that we do not really change the darker and dysfunctional aspects of ourselves, we can just learn to deal with them in a better way. Whenever we have done things as a consequence of giving in to these darker patterns and desires, and we have been confronted with the unintended result, it gives us a feeling of guilt; causes a (sometimes more permanent) loss of energy. This loss of energy by itself is not really dysfunctional; when looking at it from a distance the ‘takeaway’ from what happened and the negative feeling should be that we learn something, that we act better next time; by compensating, solving or preventing. However, just losing energy because something went wrong in the past does not seem to bring anything to anyone.

I read some articles/books on Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) where people learn to deal with such situations by visualizing the negative experience in their mind, and then sending it away until it has disappeared in the far distance. I have tried this for some situations and in some cases it actually seemed to work. Now, at the same time some of these things tend to come back after sending them away in my mind, but that could also be linked to my lack of skills and real training on this topic.

Now, the concept of La Valise Noire came into my mind when I saw some authentic metal suitcases somewhere in a small and charming shop in Paris. The basic concept will be: visualizing my dark experiences and the guilt related and send it into La Valise Noire, focusing on what I can improve/learn.
A few interesting thoughts to be taken into account while making the drawings that will fill La Valise Noire: (i) I will take a specific situation in my mind when starting to draw; I will try to recall the feeling and relive the experience. Starting with just a simple line I will then trust that the right image will appear; (ii) I draw with a small pen, making it a long work to finish the drawing, enabling me to really digest the feeling and the specific situation where I have feelings of guilt and/or regret. (iii) on the back side of the drawing I will write to the person concerned, explain in short phrases which elements were driving me when things happened, and trying to face the brutal truth. And add what I think I should change, as I should not forget the learning part.
I also see some parallels with leadership, but will explore that another time.

Anyway, I thought to share the start of this new concept. Any ideas or challenging opinions are welcome as they will help develop or change the concept. And any suggestions of things I did wrong are welcome too; there must be plenty and they will inspire me for making the right drawings ;)

Read here next article about La Valise Noire