Three Pillars
How a Powerful Coaching Exercise
Brought Clarity to the Beginnings of my Art & Business
As I began this process of creating a real, grownup website for my art and my baby coaching business, my very insightful coach, Brittany Torres of Phoenix Brand Management gave me an assignment: establish 3 pillars for your business and brand—three ideas or words that you can keep coming back to as a foundation for everything else you will do going forward.
This powerful exercise gave me clarity on what I value, what my goals are with all this art stuff, and how I want to go forward. After thinking about many options, with Brittany’s guidance, I settled on these three:
Art. Beachcomber. Community.
Pillar # 1—Art
I desired always to stretch the night
and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams.
—Virginia Woolf, The Waves
I know, they’re not all verbs, or the same, or whatever. And “Art”? That sounds general, but truly, for me it is pretty darned specific.
Art is magic. Art saves my life on a daily basis. Looking at art allows me a safe space in my minding which I can rest, calm my anxiety, lose myself in my imagination.
When I look at a painting, I think: see how that shade of blue comes alive next to this other shade of blue? Or, see the look in the eye of this figure, or the shapes of the trees, or this dab of paint next to that brushstroke? Magic.
Art is meditative. It allows my to get distance on the world’s problems, and my own. To realize that real people have been living and struggling for many centuries, making beauty. They did it for many of the same reasons artists today do it—release and relief, curiosity and commerce, self-expression and soul-retrieval.
Art allows me to aspire. I look at master painters work, and I learn from it; I become a part of an anachronistic community across time. Leonardo’s soul still lives in the lines of his drawings, and I feel him when I look at them—what my sumi-e ink teacher, Lois Yoshida calls Ki—energy that is there from the artist’s movement and comes out in the form of the line. Across time, it is there waiting for me to enjoy and learn from.
Pillar #2—Beachcomber
The wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
—Sylvia Plath, “Wuthering Heights”
—George Braque
Even though I grew up in the “Inland Empire, I feel like an Outlander.
I love the mysterious edges of the country—the shorelines, cliffs, bluffs and beaches. The constant change and activity of tides, erosion, weather, drift. Flotsam & jetsam. It feels like a place more of metaphor than reality. In times of anxiety (the mental health issue I wrestle with), I go to the beaches for solace. Few people, more rocks. Fewer intrusive, unhelpful thoughts, more waves. Strange features, curious tide pools.
I started seeing these driftwood huts that people build at South Beach , San Juan Island National Historical Park, and it sparked my long-held fascination with architecture (I taught a “Literature of Architecture” course to architecture grad students at the University of Houston. We explored the ideas of home, inside/outside, public space vs. private space, ritual and religion. These structures say so much about human desire to build and create home.
Are they are shrines, shelters, temples, play houses? Or universal symbols of all these things. I love how they seem timeless and their meanings resonate and shimmer back and forth in my mind.
As the light shifts from “rosy fingered dawn” as in Ulysses, to the bright of day, to the long shadows of late afternoon deepening into the blue hour, I get a sense of connection to the rhythms of this planet as it turns.
Then, there is the little world. The rocks with their history and geology, multitudinous and colorful seaweeds, lacy-fingered anemones and sturdy, architectural barnacles. Endless color, curiosity and creativity.
All this abundance and beauty makes me want to interact. To say something back to the landscape—I see you. And so I paint, draw, photograph, in attempt to see and share the beauty I see there. Capture it and hope others will also want to enjoy and protect it.
(Pro tip: I always take a bag with me to pick up any garbage I find. It is there, but we are so fortunate not to have as much trash as many places around the globe.)
Pillar #3: Community
To a poet, the human community
is like the community of birds
to a bird,
singing to each other.
Love is one of the reasons
we are singing
to one another,
love of language itself,
love of sound,
love of singing itself,
and love of the other birds.
—Sharon Olds
My third pillar has many moving parts, and I feel like this sounds like an acceptance speech - I guess I’m giving myself the award of actually having finished/started my website - what a freaking miracle!
The community of painters in history and now that I look at and respond to (some favorites: (write yours in the comments! Some of mine are: Diebenkorn, Kupka, Turner, Monet, Morisot, Vuillard, Gauguin, Houghton, af Klint, DeKooning, Van Gogh, Lavadour, Trowbridge, etc.)
The community of art mentors and teachers that field my questions with grace and endure my anxious internal temper tantrums: Kimberly Trowbridge, Jeffrey Simmons, Klara Glosova, Lois Yoshida, Patrick LoCicero of Gage Adademy, and the fellow students there.
The same goes for my coaches,Thank you Gretchen, Brittany and Kimberly), online mentors (thank you, Kaye Putnam).
The arts community in my little town of Friday Harbor. The truth is, I felt I had to go to Seattle to get a foundational education in painting, but it led me back to my own community and all the amazing resources here: Friday Harbor Atelier, San Juan Island Museum of Art, Alchemy Arts, and so many others. My fellow painters in the Friday Harbor Atelier are a daily supportive part of my painting and business practice.
My current and future community of colleagues, students, coaching clients. I did this same exercise with my first coaching clients, and the writing that came out of it ended up as an About page and an artist statement (Thank you, Brittany! I look forward to having you as a guest on my podcast in 2021! There! I said it. Now I have to do a podcast!)
And lastly, under this Community pillar, comes my values that I hope to live up to in my art and my coaching business:
