The Executive series

When a collector asked me to create a series of pieces for his five executives, I took this as an opportunity to tell a powerful story. One that I feel I have experienced myself when building my own business in tech and in art.

I would liken a journey in business to that of a professional sports player. You have to have strength, coordination, intelligence, vision, persistence, agility and be a team player. You have to overcome adversity at the drop of a hat and pick yourself up from failure in a similar fashion.

If a company is missing any one of these characteristics, the business will suffer. No different to a soccer player with one leg…. It just won’t work. There are no excuses.

While thinking up ideas for this series I decided that I wanted to capture five key elements that I feel were important players in my collector’s business. At the same time, these elements were also important lessons that I had already experienced on my own journey.

THE CURSE OF CONVICTION (Persistence)

Persistence is the one thing I have a very intimate relationship with. It is my most powerful asset and one that has made me who I am. A successful artist friend once said to me, “97% of people work for the 3% that didn’t give up.” How true this is. There is pain in persistence. It is a grueling battle against many outside forces and against your own mind and body. Day in, day out peeling ourselves out of bed, knowing that today…. or even the next month…. or even the next year, may not yield the win we’re looking for, but it has to happen anyway. So we go on.

To hammer home this point, my wife Olga and I were in Nevada at Sand Mountain. We were gathering photo references for the dunes I love to paint into my work. To get these images we had to climb the sand mountain. It was painful. Feet slipping deep into the sand either side of the crest, calves hurting, hips aching, lungs paining…. This was an analogy of the story I wanted to tell.

I imagined Sisyphus pushing a giant boulder up his mountain, and how painful it would have been if it was this mountain of sand, if you had to do it over and over again for some purpose.

And so, persistence was born.

As usual, time plays a role in my work as it is something I love and hate. In this case the Peregrine Man is rebuilding time to make it suit him. Piece by piece he grinds his way up the dune to build his vision.

Chess is also represented here, as the game of life is in ruins, it is a relic of his old self as he reshapes his reality. The game is over and he has won but there is still a lot to do.

INCEPTION (Organisation)

The next part of this series explores one of the four Cardinal Virtues - Prudence. It is also sometimes referred to as Wisdom in Stoic Philosophy and is defined as “the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason.”

In the great game of life the pieces of the puzzle will always keep falling. Even if the system is clean and working smoothly, there will always be a spanner that will get thrown into the works.

I feel this piece is less about the falling pieces of the puzzle but more about how one handles the issues they may bring into play.

A great analogy that I learned while meditating is based on emotional control. Our emotions are a river, and if we are to jump into the river with them, we will always get carried away in the turbulence of it all. If we are to step out of the river and simply observe what is going on, we can take better action to make the scenario work in our favor.

The Peregrine man in this painting is exercising this virtue in himself. He is sitting off to the side, simply observing the falling pieces and from a distance planning his approach. He is calm, calculating; the pieces have not yet landed, so now is the time to plan the approach.

In my experience, a leader who is calm, cool and collected is the one that is a stable role model for their people and can achieve anything they set their mind to.

A leader who lacks prudence will ultimately make bad decisions.

THE MOUNTAINS YOU WILL MOVE (Adversity)

I find the story of this painting to be a beautiful coincidence. When I presented this idea to my client, it turned out that the executive he was gifting it to had come from a previous work environment that was toxic.

Being in this new environment gave her the opportunity to build her own world in a far more effective and positive way. I did a little more digging into the intended recipient than I usually would for my work, and all of the elements came together to create a very effective story.

The Calla Lily is all about rebirth and regeneration which matched her story perfectly and happens to be her favorite flower.

I created this piece as an evolution of my 2017 piece “Let My People Grow” which explores the journey of an idea. The vision is off into the distance, the desert is in the foreground and in this case we have to build our own path to it. The characters haven’t earned their flower yet as it is on the other side of the desert. It may be a mirage, or it may be real, but in the end, the signs are there that this is the right direction. Now all she has to do is build the path and earn her blossoming flower.

To learn more about why I use the flower and what it means, please hit this link to the Perigrine man.

Like in the first version, the characters have a wind up key in their backs which symbolizes the need to constantly regenerate energy when building something new.

THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT (Vision)

The red door has always fascinated me, right from the beginning of the tradition where it served as a symbol of welcome for weary travelers to spend the night… to the famous song by the Rolling Stones, Paint it Black. We don’t see too many red doors these days, but if I could, I would paint them all red. But that’s just me….

The other element I like about the red door is that if it wasn’t for the red door, you wouldn’t really understand what kind of person was behind each door, so you most likely wouldn’t knock.

This is a horrible thing to say, but when I was in my early 20’s I tried my hand at door to door sales because I was desperate to make some cash. I hated it... the fear of what was behind each door was exhausting, and more often than not, I was unwelcome. Maybe that is why the red door is now a common thread in my work. If the doors I knocked on were red, I would have known more about the person behind it.

My message in this piece is based around the idea of changing our realities. I see a black door and I want to paint it red, which will now welcome me into the world I want to be a part of.

Of course the checkerboard plays a role in this piece as this represents my desire to escape the game of life that so many people are trapped in. It doesn’t have to be this way. In my case, that red door may have taken me 20 years to paint, but it is now something that I walk through every day into the world I have created for myself… and yes.. Door to door sales was a part of the process, as was the Australian military, being a wardsman in a hospital, a warehouse worker, McDonalds chef, shelf packer, truck driver, event security, Art Battle management, Tech company co founder, … there was enough there to drive me into a new reality.

In the end if I was to sum it up, vision was the key. Having a clear picture of what I wanted in my mind, and knowing what I have to do today to take a step toward that vision. The vision behind the red door is what guides us in life, and if it is unclear, how can we find the path to it? How can we paint it into our reality no matter how well we grasp other elements of our lives? This relates to an anecdote that I heard about Albert Einstein. He was considered to be the quintessential absent-minded professor and seemed to always have trouble finding his house, so his wife, Mileva Marić, had their front door painted red to help him find it.

ONLY WATER AROUND YOU (Time Management)

Time!!! My greatest foe. After all of these years, I still don’t have a grip on this one. I love it, I hate it, I fear it, I’m trapped by it, I am not trapped by it. Am I trapped by it? Do I love it? Do I hate it? I watch it…. and when I don’t watch it, it sneaks off at a faster pace, and as soon as I look back again it slows down. The big question is whether it exists or not. All I know is that a watched pot never boils!! That old bald cheater!

It likes playing invisible games with me that I still haven't gained control of. I guess this has led to humankind's endless search for the fountain of youth…. And to think we may almost have it in the form of technology. But alas, time will be the reason I won’t be around to witness the extension of human lifespans. Or will I….

My goal every day is to figure out the best way of being at peace with it.

So this painting is a representation of this feeling. It is the feeling of being entrapped by a non-existent force, but yet still caught in its physical bindings. The street signs give off the same feeling of confusion…. Go, stop, one way, ahhhhh! Time is a constant pressure, and to gain a better understanding over it is my life's mission.

To bring this concept back to the intended recipient, time management is a crucial part of an effective business and it takes an incredible person to be in control of it.

To wrap this up,

I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to tell these stories. Their stories are told in a way that is tailored to a specific group of people, but that being said, they can be interpreted in any way you like. All I am doing is leading the horse to the water. From here your own personal thoughts on why I painted these is totally correct too!

Thank you so much for reading. If you have made it this far, you have my utmost gratitude and I wish you all the very best in your own personal mission.

William HigginsonSeptember 28, 2022