 Hi, my name is Michael Kosser and welcome to this edition of The Leader's Room brought to you by the E. Cliff Leadership and Governance Center. Today we have with us Ms. Red Hong Yee, a Malaysian artist architect who is known as the artist who paints but without a paintbrush. After graduating university she worked for the Australian architectural firm Hassel in their Shanghai office. It was while living in Shanghai that she found her inspiration to create art in a highly unconventional manner using local everyday materials as her median. Her first artwork, a portrait of the artist Ai Wei Wei, was made up of sunflower seeds and it was done in an old residential alleyway. In January 2012, Red using a basketball driveled in red paint created a giant portrait of the basketball player Yeo Ming. The process was captured on video, uploaded to the internet and went viral almost instantly. Several other videos of her artwork followed suit. Adele in tea lights, J. Chu in coffee cup stains and Mark Zuckerberg with paperbacks. Her unusual art and creativity has resulted in Red being featured in an alphabet of media such as ABC, NBC, CBC, NBC, CNN, ESPN, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, The Design Boom and, well, you get the idea. Join me in welcoming Red. So Red, welcome to the leaders room. Thank you. It's great being here. Oh, it's great having you here. I've got just a couple of quick questions that I'd like to ask you today. And the first one is, you know, how you got into the spot you're in today. And that is you're a trained architect. But yet somewhere along the line, you made this transition into becoming an artist. Yeah. How did that happen? I guess art has always been a hobby of mine. I've always done it on the side. And but but this all this really happened about three or four years ago after I graduated from architecture and moved to China. I kept my daytime. I mean, my full time job as your daytime job, my daytime job, and on the side, I did art for fun. But I uploaded it on YouTube and Facebook and things like that. And I guess gradually people started to watch and share with share it with their friends and went out like that. And that that was really how it happened. It was just sharing my video online, sharing the video online. And so something that had just been a hobby, suddenly became your full time application. Yeah, so I'm doing that full time right now. OK, well, great. So I'm sure you get asked this next question a lot. How did you come up with the idea of being an artist without a paintbrush? Well, I think I think when I went into architecture, I started I started playing around, I guess, experimenting with materials a lot instead of, I think, just sticking to, you know, your pencil and pen and all that sort of stuff. So I grew fascinated with materials and I think that changed the way I approached art after that. And when I moved to China, I just discovered that there was a lot of stuff I could buy in bulk over there for a very cheap price. So I decided to, I guess, experiment with all the materials and objects that I could find there. And that's I guess that's really how it started. OK, so the very first piece of art that you ever did was a portrait of Ai Weiwei. And you use sunflower seeds. Yes. How did you come up with the idea for sunflower seeds? That's because my I guess my favorite piece that's done by Ai Weiwei is is titled Sunflower Seeds. So what he's what he did was he created a hundred million, I think, hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds. And that was created by 2000 workers over the period of two two years to I guess to to to I think that was to symbolize the mass producing power of China. And I thought that was that was pretty interesting. And I wanted to draw that connection between, I guess, sunflower seeds and his portrait. I wanted there to be a connection with the material that I was using. So I went to my local sort of grocery shop and bought all the sunflower seeds I could find there. And there were about seven kilos and I made a portrait out of it. That's how it happened. And you've worked with such diverse materials as paperbacks, coffee cup stains. You've also used tea lights and and sunflower seeds of all those different mediums. Do you have one that you like? Oh, and socks. I saw one where you did socks, too. Socks as well and tea bags lately as well. I don't know that I have a favorite material. I think I really enjoyed painting with coffee cup rings because I think it's it's a nuisance to see coffee cup rings on your table and all that. But it was fun to turn that into something, I guess, that was visually, I guess, different. So I guess what I like to do is really turn something really mundane and ordinary looking into something that's really unusual. So probably say coffee cup stain. Have you ever used the same medium twice? Yeah, probably have. I gave myself this challenge to make a series of 30 pieces of food art. I don't know if you saw those. No, I haven't seen that one. Oh, right. OK. So I go after this. Yeah, all right. That'll be great. I could send you a link. OK. So that was a challenge for me to downscale my art pieces because I think at one point you've got too complicated for me and I was exhausted. So I downscaled it to, I guess, the size of a dinner plate. And the challenge was to use the same materials, which was food for me over the period of a month and and to just, you know, share it with my followers, I guess, online followers every day. OK. Yeah. All right. Well, so what or who are the sources of your inspirations? Obviously, some artists. Where do you get the inspiration? I guess if I had to, if I had to name a person, it would probably out of all the artists, I would say, probably Picasso, as cliche that might sound. I think it's because I think that that he was one of the my mom kept a couple of his prints at home and she would tell me about, I guess, you know, how simple lines could depict a certain image. And he has this quote that goes, all children are born artists. The problem is how to ruin an artist once you grow up. And I think that quote has really stuck to me because I think as kids, you know, we try a range of different things. We're not afraid of taking risks. And when we're adults, you know, we sort of hold back a bit and fit in and try to conform. So so I guess he was a really big inspiration for me. OK. In your TED talk, the TEDx talk that you did here in KL, you close it by saying something to the fact that I'm paraphrasing here that when you made this transition to an artist, one of the things that you gave up and left behind was your fear. Yes. Yeah. Can you talk to us about that? Yeah, I can, because with every project that I guess I embark on, there's a huge amount of fear that I feel all the time. I think generally I'm a bit of a shy person, you know, and I think it wasn't a natural thing for me to take risks like what I've done in the last couple of years. And every time a project comes about, I have to use new material and all these doubts that, you know, pouring in, you know, and I'd have that little sort of green little gremlin going, yeah, you can't do that, you know. So I think with how I've dealt with fear is that I've learned to accept that it's a natural part of being creative that it would always be there and that I should acknowledge it and welcome it and dance with it and go, hey, because I'm fearful. I know I'm on the right path and I'm doing something different. OK. All right. So when you decide to work on any project, do you ever get stuck? And if you do, how do you deal with it? How do you get unstuck? Right. OK, I do get stuck all the time. And I really think that's really part of the process. I think that's the beauty of being able to experiment and fail and finally come to a point where you go, oh, you know, light bulb is shining and you've gone through that. So I am a big believer in failing and making mistakes and learning from it until you succeed. So that happens for all my projects right at the start. There's a lot of mistakes that happen. OK, so when you're experiencing the fear and you're getting stuck, how do you keep yourself moving, though? And why I'm asking that question is at E-Cliff, one of the things that we tell leaders that come through our different workshop experiences is that there are two sources of sustainable leadership energy, one's values and one's sense of purpose and how they drive you forward. And so, you know, when you're in that stuck moment or when you're confronting that dark fear, what is it that you said that you embrace the fear? But what else drives you? Anything else? I think what how I know that how I know I'm really stuck is if I do not do anything about it. I think a lot of times I would really ruminate on an idea or a project. And I would just, you know, drag it on and not do anything about it because it's so difficult. But what I've learned is that that anxiety of not starting something really paralyzes me. So I think a simple answer to it is to really force. I had to really many times force myself to sit down and actually start doing something and making small little progresses throughout the day. So if it's just a little piece each day, that's what starts to get the momentum for you. Yeah, OK, that's a lot better than keeping it all in your head. So one of the things that I'm sure the people listening to and watching this later on would be curious about is if they wanted to encourage creativity in their own people in the workplace, yeah, what are some lessons that they might be able to learn from you? I think if I would say that you first of all, you have to really care about that project that you're putting out and you would have to be brave enough to break rules and challenge the status quo to come up with original ideas and do not be afraid of doing that and shaking things up and breaking things. That that would be my advice. So don't be afraid to break the rules. Don't be afraid to challenge the status quo. Yeah. And I'm imagining also be confident in your own ability. Oh, yeah, definitely. OK. Well, Red, I'd like to thank you for joining us today. This is Michael Kossler signing off from the leaders room brought to you by the Eclipse Leadership and Governance Center.