An Equation for Joy, 2nd Installment ‘I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.’ Nelson Mandela There is nothing more frightening than a ‘blank’ piece of paper. When painting in watercolour, I have a method for painting the overwhelming mass we see as hair. Taken as a whole, it is dense, seamless and flat in colour. But when we look closely and see the strands, clumps and curls, a myriad of colours reflecting our surroundings slowly comes into focus. I was reading recently, (all references will be quoted fully later-the scientist in me won’t allow anything less!) that it has been researched and shown that physicists and artists use the same type of visualisation in their thinking. That in fact they have similar brains. Intuitively I have always known this, but as with any theory, it needs the practical to lend it credence. And so I use a combination of both discipline and chance, so central to Quantum Theories, to realise ‘hair’ in paint. By simply dripping and drawing a loaded brush with clean water onto paper and then dropping in the paint, the beautiful Brownian, swirling motion we see whenever we add colour to water, begins its dance. Molecules buffer and bump and gravity leads each colour to flow by chance, bleeding; blending. It’s a magical moment for a painter, as you start a process which nature completes. You yield all control. Have no ego. Sometimes it works visually and sometimes it doesn't. But each failure is as inherent to the accomplishment of the next piece as is success. But because of that possibility for failure, there is always that moment’s hesitation just before I allow the blossoming bud of paint to drop onto the clean page. What if it’s too much? Too dark? Too dense too….but the promise that it holds is always far greater and the rewards far outweigh the risks. The metaphor is obvious. Fear of the unknown holds us back from being that glorious set of colours with their high and lowlights reflecting the beautiful world around us. Fear stops us being happy; fear stops us finding our passion and using our talents; fear stops us from having the depth of relationships and the success at work perhaps which we crave. Fear……