 Good afternoon. Welcome to Finding Happiness in Hard Times. My name is Ken Burtness, and I'm coming to you from Haleiva out at the North Shore. And today, I think we have a very interesting program for you. It's called Painting Our Way Through the Paradigm Shift. And to discuss that with me, I've got my good friend and artist, Extraordinary, Patrice Faderspill. And Patrice, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ken. It's really fun to be here with you. I appreciate it. Thanks. Oh, it's always a pleasure. Patrice was with us in October, last October, which I guess is now eight months ago. And we were talking about the joy of art and the joy of creating art. And that was a great program. Today, we're going to be more specific. And Patrice has got a lot of paintings to show us and ideas to give us about dealing with this paradigm shift. And I guess I should start with, what is a paradigm shift? You know, it's not a word that we had used regularly until about the last three years when we've been going through this major paradigm shift with a lockdown dealing with the coronavirus COVID-19 and that. And we have not been dealing very well with that. So if we go to our friend Webster, Webster says that a paradigm shift is a major change in our concepts and actions. In dealing with work and how we accomplish things. And if we don't make that change, we're in trouble. And we've been in trouble for the past three years. We have not done real well with COVID. And we're certainly not doing well with the major paradigm shift of climate change. And plus our other problems. It's a daunting time. Now, the key thing about the last three years is it's not only affected individuals and communities and nations, but it's affected the whole world. It's been a, it's been a global paradigm change. And that is something that we've never quite seen before, never had something like a lockdown to deal with. And for an individual, because we can't decide what the, you know, all the world is going to do or all the countries are going to do, but we can talk about what we can do as individuals. And individuals, because we haven't been dealing well, have become depressed and they've become anxious and very unsure of our future, given this lockdown and all the problems that we've been facing. Now, there's no easy answers to this. Like, there's no easy answers to really any of our problems in life, but there are plenty of answers and plenty of ways, I think, to inspire people to lead a more full and productive and happy life. And I think, Patrice, I think you have a good solution for us because she's going to talk about finding our journey through this, this pandemic, this, well, this paradigm shift by, by doing painting. And, and that's a good place to start, I think, Patrice, maybe you could tell us a little bit about how the lockdown and this paradigm shift affected you and how you found the answer or the way in painting. Well, I have a little bit of almost survivors guilt, I think, about the lockdown because it was a really good time for me to really delve into more of my painting. I did a lot more personal painting. I do paint, most of my paintings are personal in nature. I don't know that they cannot be personal in nature, but sometimes they come more from my heart than at other times. And toward the end of 2021, I think that's when the paradigm painting project began. I just decided, you know, I think our paradigm shift has been going on for way any more than three years. This has been a long time coming. And for me, it's kind of funny because I know that the democratic process with the orange states, and the red states, well, for some reason I was thinking they were orange, but red, our orange and blue are complementary colors. And so I decided to paint a series of paintings with primarily orange and blue, with the thought process of painting us through the paradigm shift, seeing if, by painting, I could kind of figure out ways that I could get through the paradigm shift. And that maybe I can help other people get through the paradigm shift. I find that my paintings are a form of communication. I mean, they're kind of a form for internal communication for myself and art itself is a form of communication. So I'm hoping to be able to reach others with them as well. So I started out just with the idea of painting orange and blue, orange and blue, as I said, are complementary colors. And that means when they are side by side, they stay bright. In fact, they make each other brighter. But when they mix or merge, they dull one another down. And with watercolor, it's really easy for watercolors to mix and merge when you don't want them to. So for me that the challenge was to keep my colors bright. Because I think that we can show one another off in good ways. We don't have to be the same ever. We don't want to be the same. Oh my goodness how boring would that be. But if we can make each other look better, rather than try to tear one another down, I think we're on the right path. Wow. That's a great way to put it. Working together is always incredible. Yeah, maybe it's a good time because you started. Let me go back to the heart, because that's really the subtitle of our program is journey to the heart of hearts, which is our subtitle. And I love that Patrice came up with that. And I love that phrase and maybe you can tell us a little bit about how we get to the heart of hearts. Well, it's funny you should mention that because that is the 10th painting in this 10 painting project. There it is. It's, it's actually there are several hearts in the journey to the heart of hearts but that really deep, deep red orange one in the middle, not the middle the middle upper middle I guess. Is the journey that we take to get there and there's big part hearts are going all around it. So there's an each of the bigger hearts, which kind of expand out is segmented into both the blues and the oranges and, but they all still lead to that big beautiful heart in the middle. And if we can stay connected to our heart. I think we have a much better chance of getting through the paradigm shift intact and happy. You know, the talking about the heart always leads me to the brain. It's two hemispheres the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. And we rely a lot upon the left hemisphere. That gives us, you know, and I'm simplifying this down it's actually the hemispheric communication between the left and right brain are very complicated and overlap a lot but if we just take it in general terms we tend to think of the left brain is one that has the analytical view and the right brain keeps us in touch with our emotions. And I think what we've done in the past as we relied heavily upon those analytic talents that we have and answers to the problems that we have. And that's very good and it's very scientific and science has pointed us the way to a lot of good directions but it's not always enough. And we need to be on the other side of the brain to, to not only find solutions but find happiness because I find that, you know, the title of my program is finding happiness and hard times and can't do it all from the left brain and so the heart's going into my shows. And I love the way that you're directing your painting by going to the heart of hearts. Well, if you think about it, the paradigm shift really is an emotional shift that we're making it's our emotions how we feel about the discrepancies the despair and see the shifts the highs and the lows are really what's driving you can, you can talk facts and figures and point statistics at people but that's not going to change their heart. And the heart is really connected to the mind I think it's the, it's the body essence of who we are. I think we could go into a whole different talk about mind body spirit. We're all free, we're not just one or the other we're all. And so, I think the heart is kind of at the center for me, maybe not for everybody, but for me, it's the way I think of it. I think it's critical because, you know, we've got facts and figures working on the other side like you've talked about and that can be very helpful but what moves people. The heart is art, you know, and it's I'm talking about art in the major concept it's includes writing and music and everything that talks to our heart from art itself to all those other artistic things that reach us and we look at a motion picture and we look, we listen to music are we look at some of your paintings and we just, you know we look back and we say wow, you know, I mean it's, it hits us. And when it hits us. Change seems to come a lot easier than it does when looking at a lot of statistics are a lot of people sitting there, quoting you. Well this study shows this or this study shows that and so I'm not going to argue. Yeah, and when we look at art, you know we look at your art each one of us has a different response. It's a very unique thing. And we all have to come with our own answers to these things and heart helps us direct to the individual I think. I agree. Yes, as I said it's a form of communication. Actually, it's probably our first form of communication as kids. We all did, you know drawing scribbling. We were trying to communicate we were trying to get a message across and out there and, and some of our scribbles made it to the refrigerator. You know, and some of them made it to the wall in grade school. But it's communication and you don't have to know intellectually. There's different kinds of art. There is art that skews toward the intellect. And then there's art that doesn't. There's all kinds of art. Yeah, you know, when you said at the beginning, you know, that it's, you know, we see it as a young child and things like that is when you talked about kids using art. And I thought of prehistoric art of Cape paintings. And I was thinking, wow, you know, that's really seemed to be one of the first things way that they were able to communicate to other people, maybe even before language. I'm not sure, but it was incredible, you know, it was a way of getting in touch with their life of what's important to them or what they see. And whether or not, I mean, there may have been language barriers that we don't know about. And so they would leave the pictures and someone else would find the pictures and know what they were talking about. Yeah. Without talking. Transending language. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, let's maybe now is a good time to talk about the different kinds of art that communicate to us. And, you know, when I look at your, you know, your paintings from from before and in now, it doesn't seem like so much shifting that you've been doing shifting it seems more like you've been expanding from non abstract to abstract art. I think a lot of the paintings that you've got today to show us our abstract art and they reach us in different ways as well. Yeah, true. I really started doing a lot of abstract work during the lockdown. It's kind of I was just led to do it. Tell us about that what what attracted you to abstract art what made you delve into this and find so much inspiration in it. There's a way for me to just express what I was feeling and now I'm going to be in trouble because I didn't send any of these images to you. But one of them was called balancing act, and it was a cone that had an orb kind of just floating above it. We looked at that in your last show and that was brilliant. So if anybody's seen the saw your last show in October they remember that that was that was keeping things in balance so abstract art helps you keep things in balance you think I was trying to balance and I was trying to make myself a painting to help me stay in balance. So it's it as I said, I think it's my, it's a really good form for me to communicate with myself, as well as with other people. It is a very deep form of communication. So that's where it comes from. When I started with the paradigm shift. I actually I would like to start with the unity of all things and how that one was made, because that one that's the unity of all things which, to me, was was going to be a really simple, simple equation. Again, on some, on some level these were all intellectual experiments with me trying to keep my blues and my oranges separate and happy and moving. When I imagined this painting in my mind, the concentric circles were there. And then there were only three circles that were breaking out of those concentric circles. And as you can see, there are so many more circles. I had no intention of painting as a painting filled with circles they just kept showing up. But if we can look at the way it began. It began with them. It was called duality. And so when I came up with the idea of duality beginning. I am there I am standing above a table to take the photograph that's my skirt in the foreground. There are all of the different pieces of paper that I had cut out and placed alongside so that I would be able to know what I was doing when I got there. So the way I painted these was I would put down a barrier of oftentimes some jute then a barrier and I would throw paint at the paper, literally there you go. And there I am throwing my yellows and my oranges right on top of the paper. Now some of those pieces will be removed. Right now, all of the barrier paper is on the areas that will turn blue. So if we look at the next one, that is all of the barrier paper covering up the yellow and orange pieces. And I have literally with a brush thrown my brush thrown the paint right on top of everything to see what would happen next. And then when all of those pieces were taken off, we see the next image. This is what happened eventually. This is not what it looked like initially. Initially it was they were not that all of the colors were much lighter, but you could still see the pattern was there. So all of these were done in a splatter method. So that one just got really complex there for a while. But the first one I started with was is called live lightly love deeply. And it did not have that title when it began. But what I did was I only used jute as my resistance which meant I had pieces of jute going horizontally across the page. I started with the whole piece of paper wet, and I started splattering yellow paint from the right edge as you face the painting toward the left. And I just splattered yellow, yellow, yellow all the way. And then I added orange on top of it and let it blend with the yellow and then I added red or red orange on top of that and let that blend with the yellow. Then I let that mostly dry, but not quite. And then I turned and got the page all wet again and started splattering blue from the left edge onto the page, so that I started with a really light manganese blue and splattered that across and then I used. I think I usually in men blue and I used ultra marine blue and splattered those across the page. And these paintings take a long time to paint because I have to look at them. The way I paint is I paint for maybe 20 minutes 1520 minutes at a time and then I stand back and look to see what what's next. I look to see what I'm going to find. And what I want to show you and if you look at this painting up close. If we just look at that, you can find so many different objects and things coming out of that painting the first thing I saw was there's sort of a heart in the middle but there's also an angel. And maybe it's the angels heart. She's above that there's, there's, there's several birds. There's almost like a unicorn Pegasus kind of thing in there there's a dragon fly there's a dancer one or two. There's a little creature I like to think of as a superhero little superhero spy person. There's just so much to look at I can, I could look at this painting for days and find something new every time. So the trick is to figure out when to stop. Well, you know for all your paintings, you know, especially especially that one, but all the paintings that we've seen and that I've seen in this group are in balance. And it's like, you're, you know, you're working with the blues and the oranges. And you're finding balance in all those. And that's really what the the lockdown and the coronavirus and all these other problems that we're facing. They put us out of balance. And somehow we have to as people find our balance and you've been finding it wonderfully with these paintings because so much is going on and you're exploring and finding all these new things like the figure in that last painting, but still there's a balance in that painting. And it's your balance that you found. It's just marvelous. And I don't know how, you know, how you felt but when I do something like maybe writing or something. And I finish it and it works. If it's in balance, like what we're talking about, I feel good about it. You know, I just feel, oh, okay. Yeah, I think it's kind of a you know when it's done. I have a friend who says you only show me your paintings when they're not done. You ask my opinion when they're not done. When you're done you never ask. So, you know, it's, it's true. You know when it's done you're right there you sometimes most times hopefully. So the next painting I did was called the art of compromise and it's a much more simplistic painting, but I did a similar thing this time. I used a little more of a barrier, so that I could have the yellows and the blues coming from both directions. So I didn't, I didn't go to the extent of looking to see if I could find anything more it was more about just maybe coming to a form where we can talk about things, you know, can we just talk about this. Can you guys, can we just have a conversation. So I think that's what that one was about. The next one I did is called the space between. And this one was really exciting to do. When I first, I first did a tiny little drawing of it in my sketchbook and I thought, oh, it's just so simplistic looking, but it really, it really took a little bit of time to generate it's almost a little bit of time going on in there with little dots of color filling in but the space in the middle. Sometimes we just need that space to separate thoughts and feelings and ideas and give us a piece of rest. I think that's what that one's about. When you look at abstract paintings like that when I love that one, if we could go back to that for a second. You know, the first thought I had was a parent cradling a child in their, you know, an infant in their arm. And, you know, and that's, that's a feeling and a thought that brings great comfort, you know, great comfort to that. So, you know, and I'm sure everybody sees something different in that and, as you said, you know, you have those feelings that you created. It's a wonderful way to get in touch with oneself. The very next painting is called was called of two minds. And that one definitely looks like two opposing and sharp, sharp thoughts, I guess, very different ways of looking at the world is what that one says to me. But they're in balance. I mean, it's not neither the blue nor the orange dominates there. They're sitting there and they're balanced. And that talks to us about compromise and, you know, and like you're saying hearing one another, even though it may be loud, we're still hearing it. Right, even though they're both out there still making each other brighter. Yeah, and better. And from I went to the unity of all things, which we already talked about. And then the next one I did was really fun. It's called it's in our DNA. And I enjoyed this one so much because I would be painting this in public. And I would hear little kids say, I heard one little boy is maybe six or seven he said, I think that's DNA. And it was like, it was just so fun. Yay. I'm so glad when kids are learning those kinds of things so young about science, but I just thought, you know, we're all just made up of molecules of DNA, and everybody's DNA is slightly different. But in balance with the individual. Exactly. Wonderful stuff. And then from there came dynamic tension, which actually was titled by someone who was watching me paint it. He was asking me about it and I was explaining the idea of the compliments. I didn't, I don't know if I explained it then but the reason that it looks so three dimensional is that the compliments when they are, it's back in the 1960s, there was a movement of art called up art. And the artists were using complimentary colors of equal value. And when you place them side by side they really move and they will make your eyes pop. But the, there's a darkness that the oranges at its darkest brightest and the blues are at their darkest where they meet in those lines. And so that's why the painting looks like it's almost rolling in those directions. But it's something. Yeah, but it works. You know, it does. Yeah. And but that's the dynamic tension it's all. In movement. I guess that's a way to put it. And then from there came the evolution revolution, which again is playing with the compliments and the value of them and the movement. And it just, it's like a giant pinwheel of motion and action. And the next one is the tide is turning and we can only hope. Well, that's a good, that's a great one. Because we're sort of running out of time and I certainly hope the tide is turning in this pandemic, this major paradigm shift that we're going through. Me too. It was the heart of hearts so. Terrific. Yeah. A great, great place to end this show. Patrice, I wanted to thank you so much for being here and showing this. You know, I hope that some people get, you know, inspired to find their own balance to find their own. Art, you know, whatever it is that brings them that balance or brings them that. That happiness during these difficult times, because that's the way to deal with things. That's the way to deal with the paradigm shift. Like you're telling us. And I just really appreciate that. And I think it speaks to all of us. Thank you so much for being with us. Well, thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks to all the people who are watching. And I hope that you'll tune in in two weeks. We're going to have as our guest, Cherie Magnus and she's going to talk to us about the joy of fantasy, which will be great. And of course, I always wanted to thank Think Tech Hawaii, all the technical staff, Michael, who worked with us today and Jay and Haley and Carol and Ash and everybody there that made this program possible. And again, especially you, the viewer who's with us today. And if you have any thoughts or anything, please give us an email at Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii.