Thinking and Painting

On September 5, 2007, I was on an Airtrain from West Palm Beach to White Plains around 10 AM. After a vacation, I had a fresh and peaceful mind. I had nothing to do yet, no book to read, no trouble to shoot, no one to miss, no argument to disengage …

My habit started to dictate me, thinking and painting. When I think I’d like to think of patterns. When I paint I’d like to paint what I am thinking.

Out of Box Thinking: Being a foreigner, I could not fit in the box to taste all joys or frustrations on the same wave with others. I realized the gap as soon as I touched down on this large continent North America from Asia on January 20, 1988.

Before I came to US, I had been forced to think and act or react like everyone else as screw nails in a gigantic machine without breaking any rules witch controlled our thoughts and behaviors.

Any disadvantage could be a unique value as advantage. It was a painful change at the beginning to be a stranger with people in America. Out of the box thinking became a natural gift for me - an outsider, in my new life.

I lower my expectations of being “same”, so, that reduced pressures affectively. I gained time and space to focus on the targets I aimed. I don’t react. I don’t need to be sensitive to any perception of being eight good or bad, winner or loser, rabbit or turtle. I don’t even need to be trained as thick-skinned person. But I do care to improve myself by adopting qualities and receiving values that I desire.

Still, I am alert to pattern recognition in imaginations like seeing shining light in the darkness. Still, as screw nails, I perform either leader or follower in large collaboration without showing “me”.

Point of View: I use terms in my own way. Sometimes, I “missed” the point completely but end up with a “new” point of view. Sometimes, I “missed” the point by misusing words, e.g. destruction vs. disruption.

I also realize that my mind has been filled up with two different cultures: Eastern and Western. Sometimes, there is no right or wrong answer, just a different angle of view.

In addition, my mind likes to produce pictures that make my thinking into tripled concurrent processes with Chinese, English, and images. Sometimes, when I answer questions I was embarrassed with people’s shock or confusion. My mind was so busy in sorting out the answers therefore I forgot the audiences totally. Many times, I responded as soon as the first answer pop up no matter it was Chinese, English, or picture.

I am learning English as 2nd language step by step and day by day. At work, my “Chingish” has been already adopted as “extended English”. Thanks for those people around me, who have tolerated my creativities in language for so many years. Many of my co-workers are my English teachers or American culture coachers.

When I was on the AirTran, my mind was filled up with many drafted points as usual. Suddenly all the floating points disappeared but this one – a point of view for three 8s, survived. In Chinese, 8 sounds like ba. Father also sounds like ba.

Point of Departure: My mind continued to travel further from the starting point of 888 and reached a stage with 3 decomposed elements: 8 images, 8 colors, and 8 composition templates.

 

    

Many years ago, an American industrial designer his Chinese name is 大富翁） explained me a point of view for art creation. He mentioned a term, point of departure. I couldn’t understand its real meaning at that time.

A while ago, I searched the term via Google and got the answer: the place where something begins, where it springs into being.

The term was still a mystery to me until I finished the whole thinking process for a painting project on that AirTran. I would like to explore visualization with varieties to an extremely limited end within a given condition. Each painting looks same but has uniqueness based on a change pattern. Each painting must be an individual artwork.

The result of this project would reflect our life that is full of unpredictable changes. If we could see the change pattern behind the change surfaces then we could build up a thinking process to adjust us with realistic expectation in each situation.

I started to understand the term, point of departure. 888 was an original point of view from where a painting project was launched with 64 individual artworks into being via a special and unique thinking process.

(to be continued)

Da Hua Lian Array 01

Da Hua Lian Array 01 乾

Even Chinese people think that I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) is very difficult to understand because it is too abstract and abstruse.
 

 

Actually, when you see the pattern, it would be easy to follow. If you see six solid line like this icon, then you will remember Hexagram 1 - named 乾 (qián). Its inner (lower) trigram is (乾 qián) force = (天) heaven, and its outer (upper) trigram is the same. 3 lines (trigram) x 2 = 6 lines (hexagram).
 

Life is a journey with full of unpredictable changes. A man or a woman, a family, a project team, a company, a community, and a country need leadership. We all desire for a peaceful, reliable, enjoyable, and successful life. I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) is guidance to solve problems via recognition of change patterns. This set of wisdoms could help one who is struggling in various problems.
 

In I Ching or Yi Jing (易经), the power of leadership is called Heaven; the leader is called Dragon. There are four fundamental qualities that compose a leadership: maker (元，yuan), pervasive (亨，heng), bountiful（利，li）, pure (贞，zhen). A leader must have original creativity or initiative drive to make things happen. A leader must be wise with vision in order to foresee successes. A leader must know how to take optimized solutions based on right time and right position with right people skills to achieve desired results via maximized collaboration with minimum costs or damages. A leader must keep integrity in purity, striving for firmness of character.
 

It is critical that a leader must also take right action in each of the six stages defined in the first hexagram. I painted six partial faces - Da Hua Lian to wysiwyg the hexagram. Read the hexagram from the lowest line first .  

   

1st line (初九，1st 9)

Change at the beginning means:

A hidden or sunken dragon.

Do not act.

2nd line (九二，2nd 9)

Change in the second place means:

Seeing a dragon in the field.

Gain by seeing a great person.

3rd line (九三，3rd 9)

Change in the third place means:

All day long the superior man is creatively active.

At nightfall he keeps alert to peril and says without fault.

If you are in a leader position but you do not have this experience then you are not a leader. If you do have both position and experience but says wrong then you’d better to quit. A bad leader could make situation worse than no leadership. It is very hard for a parent who says wrong but could not quit and would not see things differently neither. Is this related to someone you know, or we all know?

 

4th line (九四，4th 9)

Change in the fourth place means:

Someone may leap from deep depths, and wavering flight over others, but be without fault.

5th line (九五，5th 9)

Change in the fifth place means:

A flying dragon in the heavens.

Gain by seeing a great person.

This line in Chinese is 九五之尊 , means the highest stage of success.

6th line (上九，Top 9)

Change at the top means:

A arrogant and haughty dragon

will have regrets.

The above 6 faces illustrate the specific changing stages within a cycle of evolution. In addition, I painted two more faces in each array: one represents previous hexagram and the other represents next one since I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) also called Zhou Yi (周易).

   

The face represents the previous one - Hexagram 64 (未济，Wei Ji), which will be the last painting.

The face represents the next one - Hexagram 2 (坤，Kun), which will be the next blog.

Zhou (周) means cycle or rotation. Yi (易) means change. Each hexagram is a part of 64 rotated positions within a bigger evolution. The rotation is all based on binary math model. You could get more details by googling I Ching. A hexagram represents a specific change pattern that is caused by a result from its previous hexagram/change pattern therefore its own result will be a root to form up a new change, good or bad. 
 

The following diagram shows three related hexagram evolved in this painting.  
   

 

In any significant undertaking, the best scenario is letting all leaders perform their maximum powers in a harmony of collaboration. This stage would be an environment of multiple 九五之尊 – a collection of highest successes. This desired stage called 用九- utilize all that is also defined in Hexagram 1, 乾 (qián).

I was shocked when I read this piece of mind set captured in the ancient hexagram from those who were 5000+ years older than us.
 

Why we have to reinvent the wheel? - called new marketing force, new leadership, new organizational behavior, new strategies for globalization, and new so on?
 

All Lines (用九，Utilize/Enpower All)

When all the lines Change, it means:

There appears a flight of dragons without leaders.

Good fortune.