The Split Splat Scrunch It!® Painting Process is a painting technique I discovered quite by accident. I was using painting as self-applied art therapy. The Scrunch It! Process evolved from the need to radically change my life. Naturally, my painting process radically changed to meet this need. Two-dimensional painting was not allowing me enough manipulation and hands on experience with the medium I was now requiring.

I scrunched my first painting at a workshop given by the New England Art Therapy Institute. I remember the look of horror on the person's face next to me. She couldn't believe I wadded my painting up and then opened it back up revealing wrinkles throughout my painting. Painting is a sacred act. This was downright sacriligeous. I looked at the unfolded painting and was awestruck by its rugged beauty that had resulted from the torture I forced it to endure. Wow, I loved it!

I went home and started making more scrunched paintings. What a process of release and discovery it was. It was opening up a new doorway to my mind. I started to not only scrunch the paintings but also throw them on the floor and stomp on them. Then I started ripping them apart and putting the pieces back together. As I scrunched, stomped, ripped, and then put my paintings back together, I started to realize that I could do the same with my life. The ragged pieces from the past were becoming a beautiful work of art in progress.

The Scrunch It! Painting Process, to me, is about the creation life cycle of creation, destruction, and re-creation. In other words, birth, death, re-birth or create, destroy, re-construct. I create a painting. I destroy it by scrunching, stomping, and tearing it apart. I re-construct the painting by arranging the pieces and gluing them together into a three dimensional piece. A two-dimensional painting transforms into a three dimensional sculpture.

I took a walk down the street to our local water reservoir, Riesling Pond, the other day. I was struck by how nature just keeps on doing its own thing. Life keeps going no matter what is happening to us. Trees continue to grow leaves in the spring and shed them in autumn. Rivers keep flowing. Flowers keep blooming, dying, and blooming again. The Scrunch It! Painting Process forces the natural creation process upon us. It forces us to look at what is happening in our lives. What are we creating? Is it time for something to die within us? Is it time to move on? Is it time to pick up the pieces and begin anew?

Sometimes we feel stuck, like nothing is happening. The Scrunch It! Painting Process can help jumpstart our brain and get us flowing again. Just doing the Scrunch It! Process will help open up new avenues in your brain. Sometimes this takes the look of creating choices. We gain control. Also, we give up control. The beauty of the Scrunch It! Process allows us to feel the dance of control and letting go at the same time. The process takes over if we listen to our inner wizard. The inner wizard knows what needs to be done. We need to listen and do what it says. It knows. God knows. We listen. We do. We get better. We get great results!

The Scrunch It! Painting process can be used as a creative tool for business too. We can no longer rely on our past successes. They are past. We must move on. We must find "new and different" as well as "better and more". We must create our future instead of protecting our past. Brace yourself, the old order is about to change. Things are going to be different as we approach the new millenium. The Scrunch It! Process can help in our preparations for the future in real time.

Imagine a team getting together to paint the problem. Or better yet, paint the future. Welcome, to the Scrunch It! Painting Process. It can help your business re-create itself.

The Split Splat Scrunch It! Painting Process can be used for your own self-discovery as well as helping you to develop your business. It will open up new thinking and give you a tool to re-create challenging situations into positive solutions.

Now, let's look at the three stages of the Creation Process.

CREATION
THE FIRST STAGE OF THE CREATION PROCESS
Creating something new is exciting. We can approach the creation process in two different ways. The work done by Michael Kirton with the Adaptation/Innovation Inventory suggests that there are two kinds of creativity. The first kind is adaptive creativity where people create new things from something that already exists such as making a better widget or improving the existing process. This is how most businesses approach innovation. The other type of creativity is innovative creativity, where people create something new from scratch. They develop new processes or products that are new to the world. In the Scrunch It! Process, I like to leave a little room for both. I think we need to leave ourselves open to possibilities we aren't aware of yet in addition to improving upon what we've already done.

Creation can be very scary for some people, especially if they lean toward the adaptive side of the creative process. Questions arise such as where do you start? There are so many options available, so many choices to make. Our own imagination can take us anywhere we want it to go. But, where in the world is that? Most of us need to narrow our options. We need to start where we are. We look at what interests us and where our energy is.

For instance, let's say that you want to start a new career. You know you don't like what you are currently doing. Anything would be better. But what is it? You start where you are. You analyze your current career status. You discover where your interests are and are not. You find that there are aspects to your current career that you love and others you would prefer to leave behind.

DESTRUCTION
THE SECOND STAGE OF THE CREATION PROCESS
During the destruction process we validate that things need to change. We need to mix it up. The necessary changes might not be fully evident at this point. Destruction or death is a natural part of life and the creation process. We cannot keep everything as is. Life moves on with or without us. The Scrunch It! Process teaches us this principle.

Sometimes we need to break our mold, break our patterns before we can move onto new ways of thinking. I like to call it shattered thinking. Think of a stained glass piece of art. It is made up of shattered glass pieces. Sometimes they are meticulously cut into pre-designed pieces. This is all part of the creation process. We can plan the pieces from a whole. Just as the glasscutter might start out with a new sheet of colored glass, we have started out with a new creation in the Scrunch It! Process. Then we break it down into several pieces. We destroy our original creation in order to create something new.

This is the hardest stage of the process. We can embrace this second stage or we can find ourselves thrown into the pool of denial. We might not want to leave the arena we are so adapted to and we want to remain at our comfort level. I have recently become totally aware of this principle in my own life. Leaving the sanctity of a corporate job and throwing myself into my own business has forced me to look around and re-evaluate my life. I have learned it was necessary to let go of old ideas and beliefs. I had to start clearing the debris of my mind to make room for new and expanded horizons. This process happens in the mind as well as the physical environment. I have been clearing clutter in my house. I have given myself permission to throw things out - or to destroy them. This process has highlighted the sheer importance of this second stage of the creation process. Sometimes you can't have new things or new ideas until the old is released and tossed.

During my walk to Riesling Pond I mentioned earlier, I encountered a tree that was half dead. Sadness swept over me at the sight of its dying state. But as I stared at the tree thinking about death and destruction as it relates to the Scrunch It! Program, I had some revelations. While half of it is indeed dead, the other half lives and will see spring once again. It's okay. Parts of us do die off. It is a natural process. We need to let those parts die that need to be swept away like debris. There is life coming through from the death -- death, breaking free, regeneration, new growth. It is sad and joyous at the same time. Let yourself feel the emotions and scream the pain if need be. Mourn the old dead parts that must be left behind. They have served their purpose. The life that is left is far greater than the death that leaves, branching out, branching upwards, reaching down, reaching up. Celebrate the life that is left. And just let the natural process happen.

This is true in business too. How many times do we cling to old ways of doing things because they are tried and true? How many times do we keep a product in the marketplace way past its saturation point? Business needs to practice the art of clearing their clutter too. Business needs to practice the destruction phase of the creation process. This includes past successes. Let them go to make way for new successes. Let go of old ways, old processes, and old products. Many of these old things can be re-made and re-created. Do you have the courage to let go and move beyond your comfort zone?

RE-CREATION
THE THIRD AND FINAL STAGE OF THE CREATION PROCESS
Now that the old has been released, it is time to rebuild, time to build something new. We can take pieces from the past to build the future. We don't have to discard everything. Take the positive aspects and reconfigure them into new solutions. Even negative aspects can be reconfigured into positive solutions. Look at all the pieces of the puzzle. During the Scrunch It! Process, we look at all the pieces from our destroyed creation. Sometimes it is necessary to look at the discarded pieces while doing this phase. Sometimes we can not judge what needs to be discarded until we start to re-create the new. Perhaps some of the old can be brought back into the mix. Looking at all the pieces including what we think are negatives can induce compassion. It can open us up to new possibilities. It can return us to our own flow, which had been previously blocked by negative thinking or olds ways. We can look at the old with new eyes. We can recreate the old into something entirely new. This can move us away from Status Quo and into Status Go. We need to take responsibility for creating our own futures

SUMMARY
An awareness of the three-step creation process of creation, destruction, and re-creation can open our minds to new vistas and pathways we didn't even know existed. The Scrunch It! Process will help you experience this awareness fully.

Whether you use this process as a personal discovery tool, a business tool, or possibly as a world transformation tool, you will be amazed at the new connections your mind will be able to make.