How Creativity Can Inform Our Work (aka how my mother influenced what I do)

My mother recently gave an intimate talk on creativity. She has been creating for over seven decades as a painter, gardener, chef, house renovator - really in everything she does. So she has bona fides in the subject area. 

In all those years, this was the first time she says she has ever publicly talked about her paintings and she revealed that she was a bit anxious talking about the idea of 'creativity.' - How do you describe something that just is.

Spoiler alert - she was amazing at it. 

Two things in particular snuck up on me, and then, with the force of a compass needle finding its place pointing north, revealed the influence my mother's creativity has on my work.

First, she spoke of how creativity is about coming into something without 'any rules about a certain product expected [of the work].'

Second, she explained how she always started with just observing - seeing what you see without judgement or expectation. 

(In fact, I can still hear her instructing my daughters to not paint the thing they are looking at, but to just find the lines, the shapes, the shadows, the colors...and then trust your hand - advice I hope they hold for their lives)

Now, one might assume that my mother is an incredible realistic painter. This I wouldn't know because her pieces are far from realistic - but they are real. 

What you see as the artwork in this post is that she may be looking from the porch of her home at the cityscape of the East Bay and the 'reality' in front of her, but through her eyes, heart, and hand she doesn't try to reproduce. She interprets and allows for a vibrant representation to emerge.

View from Deck - Nancy Talcott

 

So there is definitely an expression and an interpretation that grows from those initial observations without expectation. But this comes out of a place of starting where there are no assumptions or prejudgements and listening to what your observations tell you about what is there and what is possible.

Audience members kept asking her where she started the painting - meaning which subject did she start with and which strokes came first. Every time she answered with a bit of befuddlement at the question, simply saying 'I always start with observation,' not a stroke of the brush. She went on to explain how she often starts the brush stroke without even glancing at the canvas first.

By the way, my mother often paints over old paintings - recognizing that what she painted before doesn't matter if what she observes now demands a different stroke - WOW MOM! That is the golden nugget.
(anyone notice WOW and MOM are just flipped versions of each other)

As I hold that idea up against the world of strategy and culture and organizational design that I navigate in my work, I realize how often people are focused on either where we have been or where we need to go - entering that space with assumptions about what we think things are or should be.

How often are we truly stopping to observe first without aim or assumptions. Considering the questions:

• Who is affected and in what way?

• What are people actually experiencing?

• What outcomes for people and the environment are actually being achieved, or denied?

• What things are being valued?

Questions about what we are observing, as opposed to what we are doing.

In what ways are we allowing ourselves to observe what people are actually experiencing without the filter of what we believe is the way it is or should be?

We can all take a cue from my mother's  'creativity' as we approach our organizational work.

Consider what you might create if you stopped, looked up, and started designing based on what you saw in the community versus what you want your canvas (aka organization) to look like. 

Thank you mom for inspiring creativity in me and giving me the foundation for observing what is and responding to that as opposed to an imagined world of shoulds and what-ifs.