The list of reasons why we are a Left-Brain dominant culture is long and exhaustive. From our relationship to time, to our fast pace, to our tendency to multi-task, and our relationship to media, we are bombarded with gigabytes of information every moment that require some pretty high-caliber symbolic interpretation that only our left-brain can manage. So when I start with a new group of students, hungry to be able to draw, paint, be creative, I always start by telling them how very important the left-brain is to our basic survival. It’s just that the Left-Brain can’t draw.

 

The Left-Brain needs to feel important, needs to know that if it relinquishes control, even for a moment, that it’s not for keeps, it’s not going to slip away into nothingness, leaving the embodied spirit of self defenseless against the cold cruel world. So we always start with what is so amazing about our ability to make sense of what our brains are bombarded with. Just the act of driving is a minor miracle. We’re able to process all the visual input of the environment, the trees, the grass, the clouds, the white and yellow stripes, the surface of the road- and pick out what’s important instantaneously. At the same time we can process all the movements of the vehicles around us, calculate their rate of speed, trajectory, and possible deviations. And we do this while engaging our hands in feet in very subtle movements that have enormous consequences. It is, in a word, amazing.

 

The brain is able to attend to seven, plus or minus two things at a time. So how on earth do we drive? By chunking. The Left-Brain, so adept at interpreting symbols, filters out details that are not vital to the process, and chunks the information remaining into meaningful bundles. So instead of seeing the red car, the green car, the four white trucks, the tanker, and the motorcycle in all their detail, we attend to the “traffic.” How do you draw “traffic?” Well, you can’t.

 

It’s the right-brain that sees things as they are. It sees the texture and the color, and shapes, and the complex way that forms all fit together with their highlights and shadows, and reflections of color cast from the objects around them to create a seamless whole. The left-brain can name the parts. The right-brain does not name them. It sees them. So when we have established that what is in our visual field isn’t about to run over us, then we can say to the left-brain, “thank you for being there, and keeping me safe, but just for now, I’d like to see this. I want to linger here long enough to take in every nuance, and allow it, in its own sacred manner, to enter my eyes, and touch me, then flow from my hand to my paper. No labels, no chunking. Just what I see.

 

And thus begins right-brain drawing.