 |
Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday April 1, 2002 Volume IV Number 13 |
FOCUS - Paint by Number
A rather common mid-fifties gift under the Christmas tree when I was a kid was the “Paint by Number” kit. It included genuine oil paints, maybe twelve to twenty colors or more depending on the price tag and level of complexity in a colored box with a couple of long slender artist brushes and a container with enough thinner to clean your brush and move on to the next numbered hue, fill in the shape, stay inside the lines.
I remember the paint by number “Battleship at Sea” - the big guns on the deck, and the tall masts and the flags waving and the white caps on the waves in the turbulent waters. And then there was the snow covered mountain landscape with the pine trees and the open meadows and the fluffy clouds. Visiting other homes in the neighborhood, I’d see other by the number “works of art” hanging on the wall. The more ambitious of our neighbors had large reproductions like da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” That was a popular one. And the Mona Lisa. The Capitol Building in Washington DC. Or President Lincoln, bearded, stoic, bushy eyebrows, in a tall black top hat. The frame didn’t fit well, but I guess it was a kind of treasure, worthy of public display, simply because it was completed by one of the home’s occupants, a family member who had painstakingly filled in each an every space with the prescribed oil color and after all that work, now took a conspicuous place in the living room, just above the hardwood console for the Sears twelve inch black and white television.
I must confess - I never liked paint-by-number pictures. Even as a little boy. It seemed to me even then that it was a kind of cheating. This wasn’t art. It was fill-in-the-blank. Those stark lines between colors looked forced and stiff. There was no flow. No feel. It was flat. One dimensional. Tasteless. Right in there with processed cheese and white margarine.
I’m convinced now that paint-by-number does not an artist make. It’s counterfeit. In fact, paint-by-number may be one of the primary reasons why most people have given up on their ability to create.
Check
out the real Mona Lisa. Look at the subtleties. The mood. The tone. The
texture.
Kevin visited the Louvre in Paris last year. To this day, da Vince’s portrait of the woman with the haunting smile remains the most popular exhibit of them all in the great museum of art. Our son Kevin, a curious college student, was taken not so much by the painting, but by the high commercial profile of the exhibit. As you enter the museum, you are greeted by an oversized tasteless banner which reads MONA LISA with an arrow pointing the way. When he found the painting, he also found a crowd of on-lookers, some of them weeping, as they gazed silently, reverently, at the woman in the dark shadows.
What’s the big deal?
The big deal is Leonardo da Vinci and his classic 1506 painting, his personal favorite. Still inspiring. Still haunting. Still inviting. A masterpiece.
The paint-by-number version is, well, …not even close.
* * * * * * *
Gordon MacKenzie’s clever little book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball, talks about keeping one’s creative edge even in the context of corporate systems. He was a Hallmark Card artist for thirty years, and for the majority of those years, he managed the company’s most creative division. He lived with what he called a nearly impossible contradiction.
The corporation had policies and procedures and manuals which predicted almost every possible contingency, they outlined proper and improper corporate behavior. They provided Anal Retentive types with enough rules and regulations to police the rest of the company for a lifetime. He quickly concluded that individual creativity and formalized corporate culture were irreconcilable. His job seemed hopeless.
Until he considered the concept of orbiting. If the corporation is a giant hairball of choking procedures, why not orbit around the hairball at a safe altitude, spinning above the corporate globe with a magnificent view still connected to its gravitational pull without being caught in the life draining, mind numbing, suffocating gloom of corporate conformity?
He calls Anal Retentives the Trustees of the Corporate Hairball. These Trustees have their own contradiction. They are captivated by the result of creativity (especially when it’s the work of a competitor, according to MacKenzie) but they loath the process. It’s a bad foreign language to them. But consider this - apart from the snappy, marketable, popular products birthed in the delivery room of his creative team, these Trustees of the Hairball would be unemployed.
* * * * * * *
MacKenzie asks us to imagine a conversation with God some time before our own birth.
God says, you are about to embark on a remarkable journey. For the foreseeable future, you will be floating in a warm and dark ocean. You will be nourished, protected and warm. You will be eminently comfortable. And happy. You will develop and grow.
But soon this warm fluid home will feel constricted. You will long for liberation. You will seek an exit. And in time, you will find it. At first it will seem impossible. The tunnel is way too small, you will say. Small, and claustrophobic. But eventually, your need for freedom will overcome your fears, and you will begin the hard work of deliverance. It will be more difficult than you had imagined. But finally, you will be free. And you will be blinded by light.
You will feel giant hands pull you gently but firmly into a whole new world. You will long for the warmth and comfort of the place you left behind, but you will be welcomed by a whole team of giant people who will consider you a miracle, some of my best work, God said.
I want to ask you a favor, God continues. It makes you curious. He hands you what looks like a rolled up scroll.
It’s a canvas.
While you are out there in this brave new world, I want you to paint a masterpiece for me.
By this time, you’ll do anything for him. You realize your debt. So you agree.
Sure. OK. I will, you say. It’s a contract between you and your Creator.
And then MacKenzie imagines the delivering physician attending your mother at the moment of your birth, and hearing him say, “Well I’ll be… look at this… the kid’s got a rolled up artist’s canvas tucked under his arm!”
* * * * * * * *
When Kristyn first announced her pregnancy, she told me about a web site. You sign up with an e-mail address and the due date, and every week you get an automated update on your baby’s progress.
It’s for expectant mothers, not for first time grandpas, but I signed up anyway. Every week I would get a notice on our first grandchild’s development, complete with charts and graphs and diagrams. “Dear Ken, this week your baby…”
I still get those e-mails every Wednesday. In this age of digital communication, we learned to know him. We watched him grow. While his mother lay on a hospital bed, he got a name - Isaac. But a little more than two thirds of the way to full term, we lost him. I still feel that loss. The void still aches.
I suppose I can unsubscribe. Maybe I should. In fact, I went to the site, and clicked all the way through to the cancel button. But I just couldn’t do it. I still like getting those e-mails on Wednesdays, and imagining how our Isaac would be developing. Even though it still hurts, I can’t stop wondering what he might have become. I’m told this lingering curiosity will never go away.
Kris would be eight months along now. Isaac would be five weeks away from his deliverance.
And I wonder what would have been painted on his canvas.
But he’s already made his mark. The memory garden outside is taking shape. The fountain bubbles away making the peaceful perpetual sound of water tumbling over itself. Springtime blossoms open up to the sunshine, in brilliant colors.
I’m drawn to that garden somehow… like a mysterious magnetic pull. When I go there, I don’t want to leave.
* * * * * * *
MacKenzie says, “I was born with that canvas under my arm… and I sensed the mission to paint a masterpiece.”
But something happened during those grinding years of education and then in my introduction to the world of work.
The world wanted me to paint it, too, he said. But in a limited sort of way. It was as though the world took my canvas, reworked it, and handed it back to me. As I removed the rubber band, and unrolled the scroll, I got my first look. It was then I realized that the world expected me to fill it in – paint by number. They handed me a clear plastic tray, with a dozen oil paints each numbered to correspond to the spaces outlined on my canvas with a single instruction page and in bold print – STAY INSIDE THE LINES.
This was their version of my masterpiece.
So, MacKenzie said, I spent most of my adult years in paint by number. And I hated it.
As I looked back at the painting, it wasn’t art at all. I was grotesque. Mechanical. Stark. All chopped into pieces. Laughable. It wasn’t me.
That’s when I turned the canvas over… for a new start. A blank page.
I began again.
This time, to paint my masterpiece.
Just as I had promised.
* * * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
It’s the Monday after Easter Sunday. I trust you took time yesterday to ponder the meaning of resurrection.
Jesus painted his masterpiece. It was no paint-by-number. The world hasn’t been the same since.
What about yours? How’s it coming along?
Little Isaac taught us how fragile life is. He taught us how much we need to value the life we possess. It’s a miracle that we were born at all. A greater miracle that we are still here.
The world wants to squeeze us into conformity to its demands. The world provides the paints and the brushes and the outlines and tells us where to put the colors, in what sequence and in predetermined patterns and shapes.
Maybe you are like me. And MacKenzie, too. We long to freely express our gifts, to paint in broad strokes and bring color and texture and vibrancy to our world. We long to be what we were created to be.
Paint-by-number will never get us there.
Stop. Listen. Take a cleansing breath on this Monday morning and consider the masterpiece you really want to work on.
Don’t settle for “Battleship at Sea.”
Make yours a Mona Lisa.
Start today.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
LeaderFOCUS is brought to you by Good Stewardship Associates
Special Thanks for Design by my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
|
|