Voices of Leadership: Insights and Inspirations from Women Leaders

Beyond the Canvas: A Conversation with Patricia Gagic

• Bespoke Productions • Season 1 • Episode 28

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In this inspiring episode, we embark on a beautiful spiritual journey with the extraordinary Patricia Gagic. Patricia is a renowned contemporary artist celebrated for her beautiful work and contributions to the art world. 

But her story extends far beyond the canvas. She's a passionate drummer, humanitarian, author, and Certified Meditation Specialist who has dedicated her life to inspiring others and making a difference.

What to Expect:

 Patricia shares the pivotal moments that shaped her journey—from her childhood and banking career to her mentorship with a celebrated artist in Provence. She reveals how these experiences intertwined to foster her creativity, resilience, and unique path.

Discover her lifelong passion for music, from playing the clarinet to exploring percussion, and how embracing vulnerability fueled her artistic growth. 

Patricia also delves into her leadership philosophy, offering profound insights into mindfulness, compassion, and purposeful living.

Patricia's reflections will inspire you to find and follow your true voice while living with intention and purpose.

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Patricia:

Well, not everybody can split themselves into a million directions, it's impossible. So I always, you know, if you have that calling, or you have that feeling, or you're a karma, destiny, synchronicity, serendipity shows up you, you know, you, you smartly recognize it and say well, this is obviously in front of me, it must be part of my calling. Do I or don't I take action and you're lost if you don't do I or don't I take action and you're lost if you don't.

Amy:

Welcome to Voices of Leadership, the podcast that shines a spotlight on the remarkable women of the International Women's Forum. I'm your host, amy, and I'm inviting you on a journey through the minds of trailblazers. On today's episode, we embark on a beautiful spiritual journey with the extraordinary Patricia Gagic. Patricia is a renowned contemporary artist, celebrated for her beautiful work and contributions to the art world, but her story extends far beyond the canvas. She is a passionate drummer, humanitarian, author and certified meditation specialist who has dedicated her life to inspiring others and making a difference. In this episode, patricia shares her incredible experiences, blending art, spirituality and personal growth in a way that will leave you feeling uplifted and inspired. From her creative pursuits to her humanitarian efforts in Cambodia and the transformative power of meditation, patricia's stories invite us to see the world and ourselves through a deeply meaningful lens. Hi, patricia, welcome to the show. It's lovely to meet you.

Patricia:

Thank you, amy. Yeah, it's a nice fall day today, so it's a good day to have a warm and fuzzy conversation, right.

Amy:

It is. I was so excited when you reached out. I mean, my goodness, one quick look and you're such an accomplished person. I think most people would see you're an artist, but after a little bit of reading, you're so much more than that. So I'm very excited to hear about your story and your journey.

Patricia:

Thank you. Yeah, it's been a whirlwind life For sure.

Amy:

It's kind of the best kind, yeah, but I guess before we get started. So how did you get involved with IWF and what chapter are you a part of?

Patricia:

So the Toronto chapter and I actually was inducted into the WXN Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada back in 2017. I can't even remember now. So after being a WXN top 100 three times, they finally induct you into the Hall of Fame. And at the ceremony in Toronto, one of an IWF member was present in the audience and then afterwards reached out to me and said you know, I'd really like to talk to you about IWF. And I said that would be wonderful. So we had a conversation and I joined and I guess this is like four or five years now. So I'm loving it and I've met some really wonderful women. I have really enjoyed myself, yeah.

Amy:

That's a great group of women Meet lots of interesting people. Yeah, like yourself, yeah I. That's a great group of women, meet lots of interesting people yeah, like yourself.

Patricia:

Yeah, I liked the Canada Connects. I did that now in in Waterloo and last year I really enjoyed that and I think you know the Waterloo chapter is is really active and and they just like wow you know?

Amy:

oh, I'm glad you had a good time. We had a fun time planning it.

Patricia:

What was your favorite part? They were all. I mean, I loved going to the university and you know the AI robot that you know the little it was like a little robot baby that they had programmed. That you know when they took something away from it it actually had a temper tantrum pounding on the ground. And so you know, just the headway that a lot of these you know super powers are trying to move forward, which will, I'm sure, the applications in the future are going to be pretty incredible. But that was great Going into the chamber with the. It was like the particle chamber.

Amy:

Oh my God, I can't even remember At the Perimeter Institute.

Patricia:

Yes, Loved, loved that, of course, we had the Toronto one. Next year, I think, is Halifax, which I'm looking forward to eating a lot of lobster.

Amy:

Why not? Yes, canada Connects is a great event. We all had fun, yeah, so let's talk a little bit about you, because I'm so interested to hear all of your stories. You've done so many things in your life, so I'm just curious in general, have you followed a more organic path, sort of letting opportunities guide you, or have you been intentional in shaping the different aspects of your career?

Patricia:

Both. I like to think that you know, we wake up one day and know that we have to do, obviously, something with our life and I think the serendipity, if you pay attention sometimes to those synchronicities, you show up and you either have a vibe for something or not. Mine definitely was triggered, I think, by both my parents. My dad was an accountant. Triggered, I think, by both my parents. My dad was an accountant, so I had this feeling that I loved numbers and I was terrible in math in high school. So I mean, I never thought this would be something, but I ended up having a little bit of a math brain. So I went into banking and saw very limited opportunities for women. This is seriously going back to the early 70s and that's when I made the decision. It was just this feistiness I'm a Libra, virgo rising and I thought, okay, then I think I need to do this. I want to be a bank manager before I'm 25, which was really kind of unheard of. But I, you know, got into the system. I realized that you know, climbing the ivory tower was going to take a little bit of you know skill. I saw the places that I had you know deficiency, which was I did not have a university degree or any of the secondary, post-secondary education opportunities. So I did some ICB Institute of Canadian Banker courses and then I just dug my heels in to be the girl that would do all the extra jobs in the bank that people would go home at you know three o'clock and I'd want to hang out and can you show me what you're doing? So I learned how to do a lot of those jobs. So I actually found myself, when I was 23, in a very senior position at the bank in lending in credit. And then finally an opportunity came up in Winnipeg and they offered me a position as a branch manager. And they offered me a position as a branch manager and I was 25. And I thought, yeah, okay, I'll do that and I loved it.

Patricia:

So it progressed up until the point where I needed to really make a decision on where I wanted to land, wanted to land. So I made a few changes in between and then started my own business, which was in sort of project management, property management, and that spiraled into a continuum of my serving. So I've always been dedicated to working with marginalized situations and, at the same time, art. So when I was working in the field of finance. I was always still in my brain art drawing and then eventually got into painting and then realized that I wanted to do something in that capacity as well. Got into painting and then realized that I wanted to do something in that capacity as well. So I wore two really significant hats and both of them, equally, were important to me and then eventually, you know, the art world sort of took over more of my goals in life. I felt that I could accomplish something again in a leadership capacity as a female contemporary artist in Canada. Very difficult to break through some of these, you know that must be a small group.

Patricia:

I think, yeah, well, there's more. I mean it's changing, but back in the day it was. You know, I always feel like you just showed up at the right time or there was something that the Karmic Peace identified and you were able to achieve. My life, in art as well as in my career, were both. Ironically, I had mentors and both mentors were men. I had mentors and both mentors were men. So in the bank, I had a gentleman who was a senior manager, who saw the potential in me, and he is the one who, you know, really guided me to become an account manager, commercial account manager and then progressed into, you know, more of a senior level. However, also in my art career, I had Tony Urquhart, who was at the University of Waterloo teaching as one of Canada's Painters 11. And then I had this extreme, crazy serendipity of my husband. I don't know if this is a story I should share or not. It's really a cool story about how I ended up finding my mentor. We love cool stories.

Amy:

Yes, please. Okay, then I will continue.

Patricia:

So, yes, my husband kept cutting out an article from the Golden Mail on the Sunflower Apartment in La Baguette de Mouzank in France. We'd never been to France so he kept thinking maybe this is a place we should go. Well, I was at the Meg Gallery in Toronto, where I was just had been just taken by them on Morrow Avenue, and it was their summer party and Yarek had invited me to meet, you know, some of the other artists and become familiar. But when I got home, my husband had said well, I've called the Sunflower Apartment people and they're going to call you and you're going to go and talk to them and we're going to go. So I go into the home of the owner of this apartment and this is in Toronto and he has an incredible art collection, asked me if I'd like to see it and I said yes, of course. So as we're walking through his home, which was actually near Casa Loma, he said I've got to show you this one particular area and I saw this painting of a horse on the wall. It was a white oil painting, it was abstract, but it was very, very different. And I looked at the name of the artist and it was D-R-A-G-I-C, which would be Dragic. My husband is Serbian, my last name is Gagic. So I said, oh, this is a Serbian artist. And he said no, no, no, no, no, no, he is from France and his name is Dragic. And I said, oh, no, no, no, he's not Dragic.

Patricia:

Anyways, long story short, monsieur Dragic lived in Savoyon, mont Ventoux, which was about an hour and a half, two hours away from the area where this apartment, this house was. And I had it in my head that I wanted to meet him, and it was just that moment of insistence in my brain that I was going to be there. And there just was this strong, strong feeling, this sacral intuitiveness. And so when we got there and the wife of the gentleman said she would call Monsieur Dragic to see if we could attend his atelier, and she called and he said no, oh, he said no, not interested. So my husband said well, get him on the phone again, I want to speak to him. So he spoke to him in Serbian and he said you know, we were from Canada, my wife's an artist, blah, blah, blah. So he said I'll give you an hour on Wednesday. So we drove, they told us, on Mont Ventoux route, not to go this particular way but to go the other way. There was no GPS back then, so we of course went the wrong way, we were late, he was not impressed.

Patricia:

But when I got into his atelier I realized I just met one of the top 10 artists in you know Provence and he had exhibited with Picasso, with Christo Atlan he was. He was a very significant you know artist and I was super overwhelmed and I wasn't sure that I was in the right place anymore. And however, he did say I don't teach, I'm not interested, I'm lovely to meet you. But as we spent another hour together, somehow in his head he said I just had that sort of something and he was curious. And he said I'll give you one week, but you have to speak French. And I only had high school French and so I buckled down. I took 32 hours of private tutor lessons. I was eating, sleeping, drinking in French, so that I could go back and communicate with him.

Patricia:

He did not speak English, so that was in 1999. And I arrived, it was incredible. And then he invited us back and back. So for the past 25, know I, and again, being he's very eccentric, quite a genius. So when you have the opportunity to shed all of your ego and shed all the things. As he said, you know nothing, you know zero. Don't come here with attitude. Come here with nothing in your head so I can teach you. And you know. You have to learn how to say is this the right thing for me or not? And it clearly was a gift. It was a gift from God, for sure.

Amy:

Yeah, that's an incredible story. It's probably one of the most beautiful mentorship stories I've heard. It's lovely.

Patricia:

Yeah, he was very special, Is very special. I mean, he's still alive and I visit him. I was going back and forth two, three times a year to spend time with him, and then, of course, covid put a dent in that, and then we did go back twice and then he unfortunately has had a little physical challenge so I did not see him now for the last year and a half two years. So looking forward to hopefully maybe next year seeing him again.

Amy:

Yeah, lovely. I can't imagine how your art and your thought process and your learning evolved over that experience.

Patricia:

You know you have to say what is it that you need to express for yourself? And if it's a matter of the technique, which he shared the technique, and mostly it's a Matisse palette. So that was really important for me to learn that from him. But more than anything, he inspired the clarity for me to sort of dig deep into my design, my brain. You know human design. That what made me feel good, because when you love the work of someone else, your natural instinct is to mirror it. You just want to copy it.

Patricia:

And he did make that challenge for me. He actually forced me multiple times to take one of his works and copy it. You just want to copy it, and he did make that challenge for me. He actually forced me multiple times to take one of his works and copy it to get the feeling and the progression of you know what was involved in creating that. And then you do let that go. And he certainly and clearly pushed me into finding, you know, the space that I was comfortable in. So, yeah, it's been a blessing, a true blessing, and it takes commitment. I mean I could have walked away and said the challenge of you know the difficulties in the language alone, but no, I saw it as being, uh, something that was good for my soul.

Amy:

So in all of that, then I need let's talk some drumming, because I also read that you're a percussionist and, from my perspective, you know in grade school, if you have a chance to be in the class band, every kid wants the drums. So how did you first connect with the drums and what led you to become a percussionist? Well, I did play guitar.

Patricia:

Okay, so I started with a clarinet when I was.

Amy:

Oh, we all did In grade three. I did as well.

Patricia:

Yes, I had a beautiful, beautiful Yamaki guitar when I was 19, 20. Yamaki guitar, when I was 19, 20 and just self-taught, pretty much played and played and played, but always listening to music and I loved all music. My ears would always hear the drums first, or the bass, and I you know the story. I won't indulge the whole story, but a very close friend of mine was a professional drummer that I reconnected with now, years later, and also was an artist and wanted to sort of have a, you know, do some work together. So the deal was I'll kind of mentor you in that you, you mentor me and teach me. So the first time I sat behind a drum kit literally was like three years ago wow and, yeah, I'd never sat behind a drum kit and it just was this natural inherent feeling.

Patricia:

I just I flip and loved it and you, you know there's always the awkwardness. However, the synapses seem to really connect. And then, loving math. Everything about drumming is math, so it's just you have to understand, you know the beats and counting and whatnot, and then you get past that. So I've not done anything other than self-perform and that's the way it's going to stay. I'm not going to join a rock band anytime soon.

Amy:

No, so how does that fit into your life now? Is it your hobby? Is it your meditation? Is it your own space? Is that where it falls?

Patricia:

I think it. You know, I have a studio in uh in Hamilton, a large studio, and I have two drum kits in there. So I became a little obsessive, massive drum kits. I was also really really lucky Um, during uh, shortly after Neil Peart, who was the drummer of Rush passed away.

Patricia:

A friend of mine was friends with his mother and connected me to the family. At one of my exhibitions myself and the person who's teaching me we did a series of paintings to honor Neil Peart and the family came and I became friends with his niece, hannah, and her husband Alex, and that evolved a little bit for me into wanting to improve and increase my inventory of drums. So I have a little.

Amy:

I do have more than I need, that's- oh, it sounds like such a fun hobby and passion.

Patricia:

Yeah, so when I'm painting, if I listen to music the whole time, and if I, you know oh it sounds said a vitamin, it's like I have to have my drums, I have to hear the music, I must paint, I also write. There's just this capacity for, you know, always wanting to be in the creative zone and never really wasting any time because, that's you know, life's going to be over in a blink. Wasting any time because, that's you know, life's going to be over in a blink.

Amy:

So that is very true. Yeah, that's a wonderful segue. So you've written and co-authored several books. Can you share how you choose the themes of your writing?

Patricia:

I've been a deeply I want to say more of a chemical spiritual person. So I've studied as much as I possibly can about various philosophies and religions and I actually studied the foundation for the preservation of the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, the Hanmi Esoteric Mystery School of Buddhism. Then I was into studying the Kabbalah, the Zohar, the Tani Maimonides, christianity, hinduism. So as you go through the process, you direct your mind to seeing what is all similar and what feels right, wanting to experience and take my thoughts into a place where I could share more of the feminine energy.

Patricia:

I've had a lot of very unpleasant things also happenfiction narrative on my life. It was based on what I consider to be and I call the book the Karmic Alibi gaining expedient wisdom by leaving your excuses behind, because so many things that we experience in life we start to create the blamation where I'm just going to blame. It happened to me, so I can be this way. That happened to me, so I can be this way. That happened to me, so I'm going to do this. I have never felt like that. I've always felt like these are unfortunate things that happen, but I don't want to be attached to them. I want to just go through the experience, with a heightened sense of awareness and a lot of clarity, so that I can exist, but also then you become a tool for those that are, you know, in your circle or in your life, and I think that's the you know the direction of the writing. I definitely have an active fiction brain. So there's a book I'm writing called the Black Snowflake, and so there's a book I'm writing called the Black Snowflake.

Amy:

It's a superhero kind of book. What's your timeline on that? Do you know it's been? Going on for 10 years Some of the best books. That's how they get written right. It takes a while.

Patricia:

I have to push the button and not to dampen. But reality is reality and I've had a few setbacks. An unfortunate one was the recent loss of my daughter.

Amy:

Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't know that.

Patricia:

Yeah, she passed away on April 3rd and so I've got 11 nine-year-old grandchildren and her older son, son who is, you know, 20, 21 now. She had him when she was a child. So losing Kira and then having to, you know, reconfigure a lot of things again pushes you to a place where you know not the what-ifs, but you know now how do I value the experiences, not the what ifs, but you know now how do I value the experiences.

Amy:

So I may, I may, do some, you know, alternative writing on, on some of that, yeah, and do you find writing and your art therapeutic, then sometimes, Pretty much everything in life is therapeutic.

Patricia:

You get on a horse, and it's therapeutic. You listen, you drive your car it's therapeutic. You have a conversation with your best friend it's therapeutic. I don't know that anything in this life. How do you not make something have value?

Amy:

Yeah, it's not worth doing, I guess, right. Like eating is therapeutic. I mean, oh my God, I look forward to you know it's fall.

Patricia:

I cannot wait for a candy apple.

Amy:

Yeah, very true. No, very true. So then, how do you approach your writing process compared to creating visual art?

Patricia:

First of all, the visual art. I'm not lazy.

Amy:

You push the button much faster with the visual art.

Patricia:

I just walk in and it's like come on, get at it, get at it.

Amy:

Oh, that's interesting.

Patricia:

Yeah, yeah, writing is taming my time, taming my physicalness to stay focused and then allowing myself just to let all the thoughts flow, because you have to think it and then you have to process it. So, while it might be somewhat channeled, you're still in the observation that there is going to be an observation. So I'm second guessing. Oh, if I write that or say that, someone will say this or that, so there's a judgment piece. I think more in the writing. I've gotten past the ego of really caring what anyone thinks when it comes to the art, and that's been a hard stop for me, because you're trained, you can copy, you can steal from other artists, from other writers. You know we love our words. However, the true essence of what it is that you need to produce will only come when you're faithful to listening to your being.

Amy:

That, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, absolutely Wow. So you're also a certified meditation facilitator. So how does mindfulness play a role in your leadership, both personal growth and when you're leading others?

Patricia:

I was always in prayer. We were raised Roman Catholic, we were always at church, catechism, sang in the choir, became involved with CYO and then so leadership was really instilled in me, very, very young, also feeling that I wanted. I wanted to make a difference, I think, in the world. So my anxiousness was always set aside. That allowed me to get into the meditation, and then the longer that you really do study, which I did your mind has much more clarity. Mind has much more clarity. I was very, very fortunate to meet some powerfully wonderful teachers and Lama Glenn Mullen, who is one of the world's leading tibetologists, writing 37 books translated into multiple languages, at the Kala Chakra in Washington many years ago. I met him and he invited me to join him on a retreat into Nepal and Tibet, and so it was just prior to that that I had, as I was involved with a group, lama Yeshe Ling, the Center for Compassion and Wisdom Ling, the Center for Compassion and Wisdom we were fortunate to have one of the first programs created at the University of Toronto for applied mindfulness and transformative mindfulness, and I qualified, I joined, I did the two three-year programs in the same three years and I ended up becoming a certified meditation specialist. So then, when I went to Nepal and to Tibet and experienced a different I want to say different a different energy. It was a very, very small group, very powerful, and that all alone, I think, triggered my desire to help people, to be in servitude Again.

Patricia:

I always have felt that as a necessity, but also to tap into the joy of being in a leadership capacity that other people may find valuable to them. Certainly, we communicate with different people at different levels. You don't always know what's going on. Mental illness in this country and all the world is actually an issue. However, if you can offer a resolution or a remedy to do something, then it shifts the perspective and it also shifts the level of compassion that people have for themselves and they can make changes.

Patricia:

It's a super complicated world we live in, and finding your niche, finding the place where you can offer what it is that you need to offer, makes a difference. There was one thing that I was very aware of as I was doing my writing, and even with Karmic Alibi, but I had, prior to this, written something called Mastering the Five Radical Degrees of Life, which are risk, root, remedy, realization and reality, and you can apply that in principle, to the mindfulness capacity, so that you are fully present, without judgment. And even just those two small lines. If people could recognize those as integral to decision-making processes, they would step aside and re-evaluate, without bringing in the complexity of chronic opinionitis which oftentimes I like that.

Amy:

That's a great word. It's so true.

Patricia:

Yeah, it triggers us into making rash decisions or impulsive decisions without really evaluating all the facts. As I said. As I said, risk you know what is the risk inherent to this decision you're making, what is the root of it and why are you having to make that? What is the remedy? Is the remedy going to be the reality that you know. If you take this job or you bring in this particular program, how will it alter things? The realization, of course, is here is what's going to manifest. And then the reality is can you or can you not really do it? So that application became really important for me as I was making my decisions on you know what things I need to do or don't need to do in life. I created the karmic art experience which I've been doing since, you know, the last five years, basically teaching them how to focus on themselves. Tabula rasa, get rid of all your thoughts. Let me induce some painting skills and see where you end up. And they create a beautiful painting that has a memory, that has a mindfulness component to it.

Amy:

So oh, that sounds like a lovely experience. I think we would all make better decisions if we applied those principles you just talked about to our all of our daily decisions. At least, I think I would it does help, for sure. So you talked about helping people and all of those things that you're doing, so can you share how your work in Cambodia and other global humanitarian efforts have allowed you to blend your art and your service together?

Patricia:

We focus, I think, so much attention on our own personal needs and I always like to think that one of my needs is to make sure I am in service to other people. So long, long ago, like way back when my you know, even as a young person growing up, my father was an incredibly, incredibly beautiful man. He passed away on my 25th birthday of a massive heart attack, but his whole entire life was based on helping, just simply helping, and being in the neighborhood to help. He was always the first person to raise his hand yeah, we can do it, I'll do it, I'll do it, and I think that was a skill and it was also something that was so easy and a quality of him that I wanted to mirror. That I thought was was really beautiful. So, even when things were difficult, I wouldn't I'd never see them as anything more than just you got to find the right answer. You're just not looking for the right answer. So we, you know, had an opportunity, another synchronicity. So so, just for the sake of conversation here, the Cambodia project I was helping a friend of mine with her book. She was writing a book on Markawasi, the stone forest of Peru, and to have the book published. She was going to go to Thailand for the printing. It was much cheaper. I said to her if you're going to go to Thailand, you need to go to Cambodia. I had worked with a young girl in the 70s who came from Cambodia, lost her entire family because it was also sorry during the time of the Khmer Rouge, pol Pot regime, so it was really a genocide.

Patricia:

When Kathy arrived into Cambodia, she went to Angkor Wat into Cambodia. She went to Angkor Wat and she was meandering through, got down to the South Pagoda where there was a temple and a building that lots of you know bullet holes I mean, it was war torn and there was a number of children and a monk standing there and she spoke to the monk and said what's going on here? Then she saw a platform, a wooden like a cement footing, and she said what are you doing here? And the monk said Master Kawan, who is the head of the temple, believes that with UNESCO coming in to make so many changes to Angkor Wat to bring in more people, that the government may shut us down because we are an eyesore. And he thought, if he built a library, because the Buddhist scripture, the Cambodian folklore, the monks at the time, during the Khmer Rouge, would write them on these reeds and put them into the underground and the stupas in the cemetery and bury them. Well, now, 25 years had passed and the government was now much more resilient. And Master Kauan said if I take them out from the stupas and rewrite them on new reads, I can save the Buddhist teachings and the folklore. They need to go in a library, and if we build a library, we won't get shut down. They need to go in a library, and if we build a library, we won't get shut down. And so Kathy called me on the spot on her cell phone and she goes Patricia, do you have $5,000?. And I'm like, oh my God, were you robbed? What happened? And she said no, you're building a library. And so I was like what? And yes, so she introduced me to Master Kailan, who did not speak English, to Sotani Pyung, who was the interpreter.

Patricia:

And the following year I had the fortune my husband and I actually were able to go on a major trip through China from Beijing, just before the Olympics 2007. And I said well, if we're here, I want to go to Cambodia, I want to see this library that apparently we've supported and helped build, and we did, and I walked into the eyesight of Angkor and into the energy and saw the children in Master Kowan and it was love at first sight. I was just like this is home, and yeah. So as soon as we left, I got home and I said I need to know what they need, and so that relationship has been with me now since 2007, and we've built the school, a school for the monks. We had multiple events. Then we built an innovation house in Boyang Myala, which was an area that had been ridden with landmines that had just been cleared, and there were 30 families there with 50-some-odd children that had never even seen a pencil. Wow, and so it's pretty special?

Amy:

Yeah, it must be. That must have been an incredible trip and what a life-changing experience, from helping maintain you know stories from the past to building this library, to then helping the people there come into the future and learn new things.

Patricia:

After you know, so many outreaches, you, just you know you feel like you're the earth family, family here, family there.

Amy:

Such a great way to have family, though I think it's so absolutely fantastic.

Patricia:

Well, not everybody can split themselves into a million directions, it's impossible. So I always, you know, if you have that calling, or you have that feeling, or your karma, destiny, synchronicity, serendipity shows up you, you know, you smartly, recognize it and say well, this is obviously in front of me, it must be part of my calling. Do I or don't? I take action and you're lost if you don't.

Amy:

Yes, I mean, I think we all probably have those opportunities presented to ourselves and you seem to be able to recognize them and make the choice and go in these different directions that have really led you to this incredible life. Yeah, so I feel like you've answered this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway and you can tell me another story, maybe. How do you think that art can shape leadership and inspire change?

Patricia:

I think that everybody has a certain degree of talent. Oftentimes it's hidden somewhere because you're doing other things, but I think when you choose to be a creative, even if it's a struggle, you are tapping like the universal collective consciousness, and that gives you more power, that gives you a confidence that your full expression of yourself is exactly that. We dress ourselves up, we cut our hair a certain way, we wear glasses, rings, jewelry, makeup, or we dress down and say I'm not into any of that, I shall choose this. So, again, we're always on a path of a choice to stay consistent in believing in your ideas or your trained ideas, your focus, with a confidence that you're not trying to literally impress people, but you're trying to create a solution, opportunity that might open up and redirect pathways for better decisions to be made, with more rationale, with more logic. Then you're creating a better zone of production where you eliminate the animosities or you eliminate the friction, because the frictions that take place are my idea is better than your idea. So, again, the realization of taking the art into a place well, what would this look like? Is no different than my saying what will it look like when I take the paint onto the blank canvas. So what will this idea look like if I do this and what I have the privilege of doing when I'm painting is I can paint over it. So the original idea existed. Do I do something to enhance it, to make it better, or is it so not right that I eliminate it? I just take it out?

Patricia:

The same I feel happens when you're in a decision making process in your corporation. You know, you put it up on the board and you say, okay, what are the, what are the you know end results going to be? And then how do we you know collectively choose the path to get there? And when you get stuck on something, there's too many times that because it's a fixed thing oftentimes in corporate it's fixed because there's been a decision that it's almost like the law has created that this is the way it's going to be, this is in our policy and procedures. We do not have any flexibility. Again, is that really truth, or is it that truth cannot be changed? I mean, look at Roe versus Wade, something that we all have thought was complete and now it's resurfaced again because more chronic opinionitis takes place and other people who feel the empowerment are making that something that all of us need to face.

Patricia:

So we use, I think, the benefits of art, if you can, in fact even reading a book in the middle of a crisis and alter, you know, pick something that you know you're encouraged by I, or watch a movie like I'm so I love the doctor, strange movies, and you know I do too feeling that you can go to. I actually wished I think I tried to find the door when I was in Kathmandu to, you know, to find the ancient one. You really feel that your ability to do more than what is just in front of you is actually there. There has to be this. Again, I go back to the belief there's a necessity to not being stuck in just this moment, because it is an ever-changing moment. So when you adhere to but this happened, you're just stuck in the past and there can't be the level of hope any longer for a better resolution when you're still dragging something so far into that blamation that it doesn't have a light for it to be shone upon.

Amy:

Wow, I really like that perspective. Thank you for sharing that. You're welcome and thank you for taking the time to talk today. I feel so I don't know inspired and connected and settled. I feel wonderful after talking with you, so thank you for taking the time.

Patricia:

Well, thank you, thanks for giving me the opportunity to share, so I really appreciate that, amy.

Amy:

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Amy Schlueter

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