Thompson

My latest painting is inspired from a drawing that I recently made called ‘Relaxed Afternoon in Seoul’, and also from mentoring Pixel, Victoria, Eliph and Lucy on this Sync shorts programme. I’ve found it interesting listening to their ideas every week. I’m really proud of what the artists have achieved. I think it’s amazing the progress they’ve made in such a short time. It was a real pleasure to mentor the four artists alongside Sarah over the course of six weeks.

A coloured pencil Drawing titled "Going Places"

A coloured pencil drawing of a casual stroll in Seoul

I feel my leadership skills are developing as I progress with the latest Sync Leadership programme. I feel I have adapted my skills to take on more “listenship”, with the way Victoria, Pixel, Eliph and Lucy are working. I have carried that on in to my latest painting. I began with bold and busy coloured layers and as I have progress over the sessions, I feel my colours have become softer, lighter, gentle and calming. When I am painting I feel more relaxed which is reflecting in the colours as well and the marks I am making. When I look at the colours they make me feel less stressed as they take away all the other things that are happening in the world.

I felt that the session yesterday was really good in terms of everyone contributing in their own unique ways. It was great to hear so many good ideas of what they would like to make as their final work for the showcase. Furthermore I would like to say that helping the group alongside Sarah is an absolute pleasure which left me inspired to question my own leadership skills and how far I could take my practice in the future. I will say that I am enjoying watching everybody develop at their own pace.

In my new drawings I feel I have captured everybody’s metaphors.

Victoria is a magnifying glass, so I have gone up close to show my drawing style of doing a one line continuous drawing.

Eliph is a Bee. My backgrounds are buzzy and busy. I feel these represent her description of herself being busy and buzzing around  with many different ideas and projects.

Lucy was creating calm spaces within her metaphor. In my drawings inspired by South Korea, I have shown busy cities encasing people. To me this shows the need to find Lucy’s calm spaces. I have this idealised feeling when I look at pictures of S. Korea that feel welcoming, that I feel calm because I am reflecting on how I’d like to feel when I’m walking around London.

Pixel’s was alarms and pixels. He maps his day with alarms capturing small pieces of time then crating images in pixels. I thought about my drawings as a brief moments in time being captured. I’m observing people in a split second camera shot whilst going about their day. This felt like Pixels process.

These drawings are of my initial impressions of social and cultural aspects of the people in South Korea. After listening to stories and seeing some of  work by one of the artists, Pixel on the project. It captured my imagination which has inspired me to come up with these drawings.  So I started to do some research  during a weekend  by looking up various images at home on the internet before I began working on the drawings.  They give me a visual insight into the lives of the people that live and work in the country.

Thinking about the elements of leadership, my Passion is to explore other cultures of the people I am taking to and learn more about their lives by looking at people going about their day. I think they are good Choices as I want to learn more about Pixels artwork and Korean life. My vision is to create a large scale painting to continue my series of ‘people walking’ paintings I began when I was on the Sync leadership programme.

I’ve been really interested in showing the different ways our brains work as artists, living different lives in different parts of the world. I made a short film about it, painting in the studio at Action Space in London.

The streets of South Korea

I was very moved by Pixel sharing last week about the work he made after the plane crash in South Korea. We use art to explore our feelings and understand and come to terms with difficult things. I did some research and  inspired by images that I found on the internet over the weekend of people walking in the streets of South Korea.

There is one thing that I will take away from this week’s session is the way everyone responded to the questions about metaphors  and  what motivates them to make art. So with that in mind , I liked their ideas of what they are going to make for the exhibition. I did enjoy giving some useful suggestions and tips on how they can improve on their leadership skills which could then influence their artwork. But I will say that I’m really enjoying working with the group alongside Sarah and learning more about what it means to be a good leader.

The session inspired me to rework my brains painting. I changed the background colour to silver to give the painting a reflective surface, representing people bouncing off each others ideas and thoughts. The brains were repainted to to make the colours illuminate. The brains are sectioned into pieces to represent different parts of me and all of us.

It was a real pleasure to meet everyone for the first session in terms of introducing  ourselves and sharing art based on our practices before before starting to talk about what we will be doing for the day.  I gave them some good advice on how to post a blog on their websites. It is worth mentioning that my leadership styles are still the same reflecting my personality. So after a short break we started to talk about different metaphors that people will get to choose and explain why they chose them in the next session but what I will say is that it was a totally enjoyable session.

The painting I have just started is of three brains and symbolises my feelings of the group sharing their thoughts

I’m introducing myself to the new group of Sync artists showing them how I experiment and create ides at home in a sketchbook using coloured pencils. I then bring these into the studio to use as inspiration for my large paintings. My drawings are inspired by things that I see around me and the things that are happening in the world.

It was great to be back in the Syncing Space workshops and meeting each other and sharing artwork for the first time.

I am always so interested in artists who live outside of the UK and what they feel, think and face in their lives and what they make art work about and why.

Whilst our artists are busy shaping their final artworks and prepping the access for them, i have been making my own drawings weaving the artists and their metaphors connecting with the coloured drawn pencil lines and fatter arroiws that I use to express connection and emotion.

You can see clearly the bear, the rose between 2 thorns, the mermaid and the dog too! What I’ve additionally added are words of what i’ve experienced in the artists, that i’ve seen or seen develop. ‘Perseverence’, ‘Confidence’, ‘Teamwork’, ‘Inspiration’ and more….

It’s my way of staying close to the artists, when we’re far apart in the world, knowing all that they are preparing for, because i’ve been there myself. It has been so great to watch them thinking differently about themselves as artists and using metaphors as i did, with my lava lamp to explore their mood, their making, their attitudes, their courage and what matters to them as artists.

Here is an example of me starting a new painting which is inspired by my own sync leadership program.  I have decided to make a series of artworks based on the single line drawings I started when working on my Malaysian paintings. The new series are about various political issues that affect aspects of my life. These are from personal experiences as well as news headlines that I see everyday in the UK. There are lots of changes happening in the UK, I wanted to highlight some of them in my own way.

I’ve decided to keep on drawing as I deepen my understanding of how Syncing Space works in my role as co-facilitator and the connections between each element we share with our 4 artists in the residency.  Some of the lines have changed since my first posting, with connections made with thicker red pencil arrows. So I’ve decided to add these elements, such as blog posting, additional support, discussions and what we are talking about this week which is Metaphors. I chose an hour glass symbol for this, to describe time running out  because as you get older it seems to go more quickly so you have to try to make the most of things. This particular drawing is to show various connections we all share as artists which made me think about what we have been discussing as a group.

Sarah asked me to think about how the connections are coming together between us all after our first sync session together, – the lines between us.

By listening to everyone, it helped me think about my role as a co facilitator on this project. With my experience on last sync shorts, I can guide the artists with my experience and enthusiasm.   The drawing I’ve made shows the journey and connections  between us all. As we move together on this project, I will add to this.