What happens when you turn it upside down?

In this third installment of "What I Learned About My Coaching and Supervision Practice from Art School," I'm reflecting on what happens when we reframe—literally and metaphorically.

My photograph of Kings Canyon, taken on iphone 15 in the pouring rain. Cropped using Lightroom to hone in on the layers in the rock face. Marginal enhancement of the colour saturation to compensate for the weather. Sun eventually appeared that day...."

"What happens if you...

• turn it upside down

• stand way back, then slowly move in closer

• look with one eye closed

• crop it

• place it against a different coloured background

• use a mount and look through different sized lenses

• photograph it, ramp up the saturation, strip it back to black and white?"

These were familiar prompts from my tutors at Newlyn School of Art where I spent two wonderful years from 2022-2024.  At the time, these prompts were there to get me to look at my work differently, about disrupting my default art gaze which sometimes was not that helpful!  Pretty soon, I started to see how closely my two worlds were aligning; the synergy that exists between my coaching and my artistic practices. And of course realising that the act of reframing is at the heart of both.

The purists out there might argue these prompts are frivolous and only make sense in the world of abstract art. I bet Da Vinci never turned the Mona Lisa upside down!  But actually, this practice works across all genres—even in photorealism. Why? Because it trains the artist to detach from habitual seeing and enter the space of curiosity. The same applies in coaching: we help our clients step back, shift the frame, look through a different lens. We invite them to see the familiar as if for the first time.

When Marcel Proust said that the art of discovery was not in finding new landscapes but in finding new eyes, he was onto something special.  The most profound discoveries—whether on canvas or in life—don’t always come from finding something new. They come from seeing what’s already there differently.

In coaching, reframing is about exploring new perspectives. It’s the shift that happens when we challenge our assumptions or reword a limiting belief. Suddenly, what felt like a dead end becomes a doorway. What seemed stuck begins to move. It’s a practice of possibility.

Sometimes when I’m teaching a coaching class, I invite students to spend time with their cameras over lunch. The instructions? Photograph anything – but don’t just point and snap; stop, breathe, then shift the viewfinder. Zoom in. Zoom out. Tilt your angle.  One tiny shift in perspective can make all the difference. In the same way, a flower seen through a macro lens reveals a completely different image; specks of dust, hints of colour, minor imperfections, a small insect crawling along a petal—details that were always there, but not seen by the naked eye.

Reframing invites us into the same kind of wonder. If you're stuck, overwhelmed, or lacking motivation, consider this: maybe the issue isn’t what you’re looking at, but how you’re seeing it. 

Whether in the studio or in a coaching session, alchemy often happens at the intersection—when one strand of life starts to inform another. As Michael Bungay Stanier says, "Change happens at the boundaries." For me, those boundaries between art and coaching are full of creative possibility and I continue to explore them.

So, what might happen if you viewed your current challenge like a painting-in-progress?What might be revealed if you shifted your frame, changed your lens, or flipped the whole thing upside down?