This is a new video series from my studio overlooking Lake Michigan. It’s where I slow down, listen, and make art that brings light into the world. This is Echo Base Dispatch—a brief transmission from here to wherever you are—where I share what I’m working on, what I’m wrestling with, and the lessons I’m learning along the way.
–Jason
The best part of living on the edge of Lake Michigan is witnessing the incredible, infinite creativity of God every day. Upon the simple canvas of sky and water, He paints an endless stream of masterpieces.
His work effortlessly transitions from calm to mysterious to turbulent, and his use of color, form, and texture is breathtaking. One day, the sky is a watercolor painting, with subtle pastel hues bleeding into one another like a melting scoop of rainbow sherbet. Other days are oil paintings, with an impasto of thick, angry clouds scraped across the sky. Some days, He pulls out all the crayons, some days his palette is quite limited, and some days, I swear, He’s inventing new colors.
Since I’ve been living here, I’ve harbored a desire to capture what I see. I know my version can’t hold a candle to His, doomed to look like a dime store copy of a copy of a copy. A proverbial exercise in futility.
But alas, I can wait no longer. On the occasion of turning fifty soon, I have decided to undertake a quest in which I sit on the edge of the Master’s studio and create fifty copies of some of His best work. Fifty paintings of the same sky and water that somehow never look the same.
I’m calling the series of paintings “50 Shades of Great.”
As if this tinker project wasn’t challenging enough, I am adding an extra wrinkle: I can only use four colors on each painting.
There’s a reason I’m limiting myself like this.
Let’s start by hopping in a time machine, back to a time when a box of 64 Crayola crayons — complete with a sharpener in the back — was as valuable as anything on Earth. I recall it containing every color known to mankind, exotic hues not found in the pedestrian collections of 8 or 24: Periwinkle. Brick Red. Cornflower. Thistle. Goldenrod. And of course, Gold and Silver, which I was convinced were made with real bits of the precious metals.
The box of 64 crayons turned anyone into an artist. Everything was possible; there was nothing you couldn’t draw.
Nowadays, we’re still artists. No longer working in crayon, turning out drawings to decorate the fridge, we are now tasked with creating better communities, businesses, and teams. In this work, we often yearn for a bigger budget, less red tape, or more cooperation from colleagues, upper management, and politicians. We could use more training, more structure, more resources.
If only I had brick red! Can you imagine what I’d do with periwinkle? We could make a real difference with silver and gold in our crayon box!
How we long for the unlimited possibilities that box of 64 crayons represented!
If I had double the budget, I could really make some strides with these students.
If I had a few extra hours a week, I could make some real progress on this plan.
If I had another acre, an extra room, or a few hundred more square feet, I could be so more productive and efficient.
If I had a bigger team, we could get so much more accomplished.
Money. Time. Space. Manpower.
Silver. Cornflower. Brick Red. Periwinkle.
You may want the big box of 64 crayons, but there is never a time when you’ll have everything you wish you had.
Most of the time, it feels like you’re a few crayons short of filling the humble box of 8.
Short of the resources that would make your work significantly easier or more effective, it’s easy to feel paralyzed and tempted to throw your hands up in resignation. We let the disappointment over what we don’t have keep us from making the most of what we do.
But here’s an important truth to keep in mind. The best painters in the world can create a masterpiece with only four colors: red, yellow, blue, and white. That’s all you need to paint a rainbow.
Even though art supply stores feature walls of paint tubes in a dizzying array of pigments, the wise teachers implore their students to proactively limit their palette to a handful of hues to ensure a harmonious, pleasing result.
True creativity thrives when constrained by limitations. Ultramarine was the finest and most expensive blue used by Renaissance painters. It was made from lapis lazuli, a rare and expensive stone, often costing more than gold. But when you are using a lot of warm earth tones, as those master painters did, a neutral gray made from black and white can take on a blue tone by comparison.
Having access to all the colors does not make one an artist.
It’s about knowing how to use the ones you have.
Whether you are an educator, a healthcare professional, an entrepreneur, or a parent trying to raise great kids, I understand you wish you had more time, more resources, and more freedom to do the important work that needs to be done.
Unfortunately, that may never be the case. It rarely is in the real world.
But that’s ok.
You are simply called to do the best you can with what you have.
Don’t let your limitations hold you back, dear artist.
