Lorraine Gill – The Artist Who Inspired Images in Mind Maps
Lorraine Gill is a highly respected Australian contemporary artist. Numerous key exhibitions in galleries have featured her innovative work. Art critic, John Berger has said of her pictures, “… they are very sensuous, tender and beautiful in a very direct way. They appear to be the product of a totalising vision, embracing many forms of experience, of which the intellectual is only one.”
One of Lorraine's most personally significant accomplishments was being invited by the Indigenous Australian people to become an 'artist in residence'. They befriended and protected her, and knew her affectionately as "That woman with them sticks" - meaning her pencils and paint brushes. One of her most striking pictures, “Global Brain”, which I have as a full-sized signed print on my bedroom wall, is inspired by the view from the sacred Uluru.
She has been a lifelong supporter of Tony’s quest of “Global Mental Literacy” and played a pivotal role in the use of Images as a key component of Mind Mapping. Tony in turn championed and supported Lorraine’s work. She was awarded The Brain Trust Charity’s “Brain of the Year” title in 2014. Lorraine refers to Tony by the affectionate pet name “Googs”.
Before meeting Lorraine, at the age of 24, Tony firmly believed he was not creative. He explained to Lorraine, that he couldn’t draw. She looked at him with amazement, and asked him what he was talking about!
Tony tells the story: "Using my debating experience, academic background and powers of persuasion, I attempted to demonstrate to her that I could not even draw a cube.
My demonstration was successful!
All the shapes that came out on the page were total distortions of the shape of a cube. Lorraine looked at me with both pity and compassion, and explained to me that someone with my presumed intelligence should have been able to work out that drawing was a natural human function, that it had its own alphabet, and that once you had learned that alphabet, you could automatically draw.
She demonstrated that a cube was simply a square with three parallel diagonal lines emanating from it, and that to make a cube all you had to do was draw a horizontal and a vertical line connecting the three diagonals, and you had a cube.
I tried my first cube, and because I had been taught so well, and because the language of art was so fundamentally 'clean', the cube was basically perfect. It was, in every sense of the word, a moment of enlightenment. That cube shone in my internal Universe like the most brilliant supernova, and opened up that Universe to other Universes of possibility. In an instant, I had become an artist. I couldn't stop drawing cubes for some time, and proudly showed them off to my somewhat bemused friends, who thought I had gone a bit strange, and who thought so only because they did not understand the gigantic weight of impossibility that had been lifted from my shoulders, mind and life."
I had the privilege of asking Lorraine about her recollections of Tony, Art and Mental Literacy:
PC: What prompted you to a career as an artist?
LG: I had won a scholarship at age 15 in the then Australian Bush to study Art in Sydney!
PC: When did you meet Tony and what was your first impression of him?
LG: I then studied Flamenco Dancing in Franco’s Spain until 1966. At Authur Murray’s dancing school I met Googs! A bizarre encounter; a twist of fate where two creative minds meet on so many levels.
When Googs told me of his vision to educate humanity with 'Mind Maps' it seemed to be so logical!
PC: How do you think art and science relate to each other?
LG: Science and Art are intertwined; whether all forms of creativity; whether it be proportions of the human body; the mathematics on a dance floor; baking a cake; it all is to do with equations of the brain.
PC: Obviously, images as metaphors are a vital part of Mind Mapping and also an important aspect of your art. Do you see a parallel?
LG: The Brain reflecting itself organically, synaptically, according to its own processes; a reflection of 'itself'.
Colour is by definition; an association in accordance with the brains processes; therefore; memory' therefore; 'Mind Map'!
The Brain is organic; evolving in accordance with the environment; a symbiosis of us and our planet!
PC: As someone who was close to Tony for longer than anyone else. It is interesting that, as a later proponent that everyone is an artist, poet and scientist, when you first met him he was convinced he was not capable of even drawing a cube. How did you convince Tony he could draw?
LG: Teaching Googs to draw a cube; was only a revelation because; he had 'not been taught; It has made me angry for years!
PC: Is Mind Mapping an art form as Tony believed or something distinctly different?
LG: He was right; it is the fundamental laws that lie behind all things that give us a known order to learn from.
PC: As a fierce advocate for ‘Global Mental Literacy’ what do you think are the most significant messages?
LG: What Googs tried to teach us was the meaning of what we have in our heads; a universe of exploration!
Despite her modesty, Lorraine’s contribution is of supreme importance. I’m sure without the use of images within Mind Maps they would have been infinitely less effective. Images are an integral and natural part of memory and are at the most fundamental level how we think and interpret the world. Words are just labels, which evoke pictures in our minds. Images inevitably also play a vital role in promoting creativity.
