If you would like to listen to the podcast version of this blog, go to https://anchor.fm/tamara-tanner/episodes/Day-5-What-are-You-Paying-Attention-To-e14qvml
My sisters are amazing people, and I am grateful for the group text we have with each other. Today I sent three pictures of a landscape miniature quilt I am working on. Each one had a slightly different layout of the mountains and water. I simply asked if they had a favorite. Out of three sister’s responses, I got three different answers. So I asked a follow up question. Why do you like the one you do?
This opened my eyes to something so interesting. Your perspective depends on what aspects of something you are paying attention to. One sister didn’t like one of the landscapes because the frame around it was not symmetrical. I had cut strips of cardstock to use as a temporary frame to better see how the pieces of fabric I was going to sew together would look when it was done. The color was not chosen specifically for this, and I didn’t make sure that they were lined up exactly straight either. Yet that detail of asymmetry was so disturbing to that sister that it drew her attention there and she judged as her favorite the one that had the frame straighter, and perhaps was not based at all on the way the mountains and water were laid out.
Another sister liked the asymmetry of the landscape because in nature, things are not symmetrical. Then there was a discussion on which part we were giving our opinion about. One sister was giving an opinion about the frame, the other about what was inside. On the surface, it appeared that they had opposite views, but really it was what detail each was focused on. The sister who liked the asymmetry said she didn’t even pay any attention to the frame. A change of focus brought a change of perspective. I explained that the framing did not look anything like what the end product would be and that I was interested in the landscape layout.
With that perspective, another sister said that she liked one of them because the water was bigger, so it looked like a lake, and she didn’t like the water horizon being at a slant. She said it made her uncomfortable like she was tipping over and it just felt wrong to her. When I looked at the pictures again, I saw how the one with the biggest body of water looked more like a lake. However, the slanted ones for me looked more like either a river or just a view from a different location. Then I started seeing the slanted ones being less realistic, but caricatures. When you animate something by exaggerating one characteristic, it emphasizes it and evokes a unique feeling. The top one with the mountain horizon getting lower towards the right at the same time the water horizon is getting higher lacks literal perspective, but gives emotional perspective. It is as if I were being tossed in a boat at sea, so the perspective of the mountains is constantly changing as the waves move the boat I am in.
What did I learn from being aware of the different landscapes and what people were saying about them? That our perspective differs depending on what we are focused on. That what we are focused on depends on our personality and the life experiences we have had to that point. That someone else sharing their perspective changed my own. I’m the one who created these landscape layouts, yet other people noticed details about my own creation that I hadn’t noticed before. By looking at them through another person’s view, I understood my own creation better.
Explorations in Healing 