Painting copyright Denny Dent and available at Denny Dent’s Art Brokerage Page
“You know what the problem is with you people? You only see what you expect to see!”
That was the line that totally gripped me. Like a bolt of lightning it hit. WOW!!!
Let me back up. His name was Denny Dent, the quintessential rock ‘n roll artist, and he was right. If you never got the opportunity to see him perform in person (and he was nothing if not a performing artist) then you have no idea what you have missed. He has met and painted most of the significant musicians of our time: the Beatles, Elton John, Jimmy Hendrix—all the greats. And funny!? Oh my gosh, between the stories he had to tell and his gift of comedic timing, he was a ball to watch and listen to. One of his gifts was to paint a portrait of a famous musician in about the time it would take to play one of their songs. I got to watch him do it once.
He set up the scene, laid out the materials and then the music started. He began throwing paint like crazy, grabbing brushes in both hands; he’s telling jokes and feverishly working as everyone is cheering him on and laughing. He’s going at the speed of light, flinging paint everywhere, but as the song wound down to its end it became apparent that Denny missed the mark and the picture looked like a big fat lot of nothing. I mean, it certainly wasn’t the Jimmy Hendrix we were expecting. It was little more than colorful spatters of paint on a canvas punctuated by stories and laughter still hanging in the air. Denny was instantly deflated. “What could be wrong?” he mumbled. Then he brightened up—just one little thing he forgot, he exclaimed! And then with great fanfare and enthusiasm he grabbed a sponge, dipped it quite unceremoniously in white paint and blotted a diagonal line in the lower left hand corner. As you might expect, it still didn’t look like anything and everyone was cracking up, thinking it was all part of the comical act and any minute he was going to throw it away and show us what he could really do. But he didn’t.
Instead, he walked to the front of the stage and, hands on hips, shook his head at us and said: “You people…you know what the problem is with you people? You only see what you expect to see!”
Then he walked back to the canvas, crossed his arms and flipped the painting 180 degrees upside down and behold—it was the classic Jimmy Hendrix portrait. You know the one: eyes closed, head tilted up, white bandana…it was the spitting image. The crowd erupted. And Denny Dent was right. That is what is wrong with us people: We only see what we expect to see!
What was most amazing to me is exactly what he pointed out—not that he painted it upside down. That’s not really that big a deal for a trained and gifted artist. But what I couldn’t get over was the fact that there must have been a thousand people in the audience—and no one saw. It was right in front of our eyes the whole time and no one saw it!
The same goes for opportunities, my friend. We have opportunities in front of our eyes all the time, and we don’t see them. What could you discover if you simply turned the situation upside down today?
