Seeing Differently: Visual Thinking Strategies And Human-Centered Dialogue With Dabney Hailey
What if slowing down and looking carefully could transform how we lead, connect, and collaborate? In this deep and reflective episode, museum educator and Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) expert Dabney Hailey shares how structured observation and shared dialogue can spark insight across fields—from classrooms and galleries to corporate teams and healthcare settings. Drawing from her years facilitating art-based inquiry, Dabney explores how listening, uncertainty, and slowing down can deepen our understanding of each other, shift group dynamics, and make meaning in more human ways.
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Seeing Differently: Visual Thinking Strategies And Human-Centered Dialogue With Dabney Hailey
It is my honor to introduce you to my guest, Dabney Hailey. Dabney is a founder and principal of the Hailey Group, a lecturer at the MIT School of Management, and a course director at the Harvard Medical School. She is the premier thought leader on the innovative application of what's called Visual Thinking Strategies, known as VTS, within businesses. Deeply trained in VTS, a research-based methodology originally developed for museums and schools.
She's honed her craft across university disciplines for more than a decade as a curator at Wellesley College at Brandeis University. These contexts enabled her to bring her art expertise to robust learning and core ideas in a broad range of disciplines, from anthropology to the hard sciences, from business to social policy.
With Hailey Group team member, Philip Yenawine, hopefully I pronounced his name correctly, and Corinne Zimmermann, Dabney co-founded VTS at Work, the first program to deeply train and certify professionals in VTS facilitation and its application on business and other materials. Dabney and Corinne Zimmermann, with colleague Dr. Joel Katz, adapted this program for continuing medical education credits for physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals through Harvard Medical School.
That course is Training Eyes, Minds, and Hearts: Visual Thinking Strategies for Healthcare Professionals. Amazing. Dabney also works in higher education, serving as co-director of the Harvard Medical School course, Training the Eye, Proving the Art of Physical Diagnosis. She co-taught advanced human-centered design with the Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity at the Claremont Colleges. Much earlier in her career, she enjoyed teaching museum studies and art history courses at Northwestern, Boston University, in Brandeis. She holds a BA from Hendrix College and an MA from Northwestern University.
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You have been super busy. I am truly honored to welcome you to the show, Dabney.
Thank you, Tony. It's a delight to be here. It's a real privilege and I feel my hands warming in the fire.
I love it. It really is when I do these intros, there's so much to it, but also I want to make sure people see the full breadth of what you've been up to. This is not just a nice-to-have. These are things that are really foundational to how people are showing up in the world, and how do we change the way physicians are acting in the world and how business leaders can perform.
That's why I was so thrilled to be able to bring your work and your story into this forum. I'm thrilled. We're going to have a lot of fun. You're so welcome. Without further ado, we're going to share your story through what we call flashpoints. Flashpoints are the moments in your journey that have ignited your gifts into the world. I'm going to turn it over to you in a moment so you can share what you're called to share. Along the way, we'll pause and see what themes are showing up. Are you ready to roll?
I'm ready to roll. Let's do it.
Wonderful. Please take it away.
The Lightning Bolt Moment: Early Art Experiences
Thanks. When I was reflecting on Flashpoints, my mind immediately went to when I was fourteen years old and my first visit to a proper art museum. I grew up in a place that wasn't near any art museums. They were at least a 2 or 3-hour drive away. My family, we weren't able to do that. I loved art. My dad was an architect. When I was fourteen, I went to Washington, DC, to the East Wing of the National Gallery, which is a beautiful building designed by I.M. Pei.
I still remember when I walked in, how the space felt, and the light. There was a huge Calder mobile hanging from the ceiling and a bunch of other sculptures. I won’t go into all of them. It was like a lightning bolt for me. I didn't understand for a long time what that experience would mean, which we can get into later—for example, me becoming a curator.
And then when I was nineteen, that was my next big museum experience. I went to college in the same state where I grew up, and I still couldn't access art museums that often. I got to go to London the summer after my freshman or sophomore year, can’t remember now. I went to the Tate Britain. The Tate Modern didn't exist yet. There was a gallery there with a Jackson Pollock painting, and I had an out-of-body experience with that painting. There were some Giacometti sculptures nearby. I still remember exactly how that gallery was laid out. That was a big flashpoint and one that still reverberates in my life. Those two moments of looking, of being with art and thinking about who I am and how to make meaning.
Those are process moments I realize now, to be with something and it's unfolding with you, or you're unfolding with it in a way. I think ever since, I've wanted to help create those kinds of experiences for people. It took me many years before I began to think I could maybe do that, but it definitely set me on a path. Those two flashpoints of personal experiences with art.
I just want to reflect on that. First of all, that's powerful. This lightning bolt moment of you didn't realize this was going to happen. It just happened. I like how you reframed the seeing it into being because it's not just looking at something. It's what it makes you feel, all the senses almost get evoked in that moment, and you realize that there's more to looking at art. It's about what does it make you feel? What do you experience in that moment? In many ways, and maybe this is getting a little ahead of our skis, but I think it's challenging nowadays when you go into museums and you see a lot of people around, it can crowd out your experience because you want to be almost alone in that experiencing of the art. It's hard when everyone's rushing around and crowds you out.
Museums, especially the big civic museums, they are certainly counting [visitors] more than creating experiences, many of them. I think there are a lot of tensions around that in terms of why that happens that have to do with how they're funded and things like that. I have a lot of empathy for museum professionals trying to make it all work. But yeah, there is that sense of being alone with art and all of the lightning bolts going off.
Meaning-making through art can transform how we show up as individuals and together.
What for me can be really interesting, Tony, is having that experience with other people. Of course, that's what I do now, so that's where I jump. I think it's even more powerful to enter into a group experience of that kind. It's not easy to do. It requires a facilitator in a structured space, but boy, if you can create that armature to help people enter into art for an extended period together and be in that meaning-making, sense-making, finding new ways of being, both as individuals and together from our own experiences and in the face of a new and powerful stimulus, like a great work of art.
That richness, I love. It's unparalleled, and it can help transform us as we move through our lives, I think. That's not the crowded experience either. I cannot remember what the current research is, but I think people spend only somewhere between 5 and 15 seconds typically in front of a work of art in a museum. It's probably that crowd you're talking about. We just keep moving.
It's partly the way curators—and I used to be one—we put those labels up and we think we're helping, but often those labels are giving people an excuse to keep moving like they think they're done instead of looking again. I do think a lot of museums are getting better at helping us look back at the work of art. Anyway, there are a lot of aspects of art experiences that we need to pay attention to, and we need to encourage people to enter into these experiences a little differently so then they can go wherever they're going to go.
It's like a “yes, and” in terms of thinking about it from a personal experience, and from a group experience, and from a slow experience, and all the different elements of how are you approaching the art and seeing from different angles and lenses, which I know we'll get into because that's what a lot of the work is. What's the next flashpoint that comes to mind? How did you take this deeper into your world?
Unlocking Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)
I think the next one would be when I first encountered Visual Thinking Strategies, which is the methodology you mentioned at the beginning, and that I now teach, adapt, and apply within the business world. The first time I experienced it was at a real turning point in my life. I think that's one reason it hit home so deeply. I was a graduate student. I was in a PhD program in art history, which was amazing in many ways.
I had just reached the conclusion that I wasn't happy. I didn't necessarily want to be a college professor, which is what I had imagined myself being. I wasn't delighted with the work environment I was in. I realize now that that's what I do now [help create positive work environments]. I was searching. I was at one of those transition points. I was doing a lot of informational interviews. I was working at a museum and wrapping up graduate school, leaving my program and trying to transition into curatorial work.
I realized I wanted to work with objects, with the real physical art objects. I was moving into that arena, but also wondering what more there might be professionally for me. I met someone who recommended I go experience Visual Thinking Strategies, which was at that point—this was about 25 years ago—it was a relatively new pedagogical method within museum education. It had been around in its solid form for maybe a decade.
I went to San Diego and I took a workshop with Philip Yenawine, who's now part of Hailey Group and was my mentor, now my friend, and my mentor still because we're all mentors to each other. He was teaching the VTS workshop that weekend, I think it was three days. I'll describe it in a little bit of detail, just the lightning bolt there, because there was another one, but it took a 24-hour period. Because I was so steeped in art history and theory, I went to a graduate school with a lot of emphasis on theory and less on looking.
I now realize that must have been part of my dissatisfaction. I went to this workshop. I sit down with Philip Yenawine, and when he starts leading a discussion about a work of art, it is unlike anything I have ever done. All of my art-history-PhD-student red flags went up. Like, “This guy's not telling me anything. He's not giving us any good questions. What are we doing?” I did appreciate how gentle it felt. I became more and more curious about the people around me and what they were saying about the work of art, but it didn't feel like what I would have called a “real” discussion about a work of art.
I went to bed that night. I thought, “What did I get myself into? What about the style and when the artist was born,” and all these data points that felt so vivid and important to me, and they are, but they come later. Anyway, so the next day, everybody who was at the workshop had to lead VTS discussions. That's when it hit me. I stood up, and I had to follow this protocol. I had to really listen to people and paraphrase them and ask them only certain questions, but good questions.
Instead of rushing to solve, we can sit with complexity—and find more meaningful paths forward.
The conversation went on for 25 minutes, and it was so interesting. I just became more and more involved, and the work of art was changing before my eyes as I didn't contribute but listened. It was just magnificent. I suddenly realized this is what I've been missing during this different graduate school experience. I do love art history and scholarship, so I'm not putting that down, but we weren't doing much of this deep looking.
It reminded me of that experience I had with Pollock, but instead of it just being me, I was facilitating the experience with a group of people I had never met until the day before. We went so deep, and it felt so personal in a good way. I got to know these people, and they got to know me. That was a very dramatic pivot point for me. I went on and became a curator. I started going to these annual VTS trainings on Cape Cod with Philip and Abigail Housen, the other co-founder of the method.
I didn't know that at the time, but I was embarking on a journey that would bring me to different places about fifteen years later. That was a pivotal point that made me think about not just art, but what it means to teach, what it means to lead, what it means to listen. I remember going back home after the workshop and trying to explain it to my friends, who were all art historians too. I remember saying, “It was democracy in action.”
It felt very political to me, too, that I felt I was in a space where everybody really listened to each other, but we didn't have to agree or disagree. We were trying to figure things out. From the very beginning, I recognized it as a different way of being. Now it took me many years, even decades to make sense of that. That was another flashpoint for sure, that weekend.
Democracy In Action: VTS And Meaning-Making
That's really powerful. I love the way you say that. It was like democracy in action because it's like there's a sense of uniting us through the power of looking at something and not trying to create an academic view of it, but more of a meaning-making through it which is what is resonating for me as you describe this. This sense of like, what meaning are you making out of it? There's no right or wrong. It's what you make of it. That's where it's not about everyone having to agree, but we have to be able to interpret our own meaning from what we see.
It's got a lot of rigor, Visual Thinking Strategies. There's also a sense of needing to be true to the work of art we're looking at. There's a question in it, Tony, What do you see that makes you say that? That rerouting of one's idea or meaning, making it back in the picture, and slowing down our thinking. When I use the word thinking, what we're feeling, what we're thinking, all of it, the richness of experience at hand. Slowing that down and helping ourselves think again and name what's in the work of art that is driving this meaning.
That's a moment of either building and deepening that thought or even letting go, if it's not there. There's a lot of rigor in terms of how we hold ourselves to something, which is also related to me in that early take, that this feels like democracy in action. Let's be evidence-based as we move for our meaning-making together, if we're trying to make sense of things.
There's also something in what you just said, I just want to capture quickly, which is that we're not in a VTS discussion to immediately solve and execute. This brings it back to that business setting that I know we both work in. It's really hard not to leap to solving and concluding, and deciding, and a bias toward action. Like, “Here we go. Let's move on.” That's tough in the business world.
This process really helps people think deeply and carefully, whether it is a work of art or something they're working on, in a vivid, real, authentic way together. When they finally do need to get to solving or deciding, or the next stage of their work, it's far more robust. Everyone felt heard and understood. We have let go of things that maybe were rooted in assumptions or aren't based on evidence. We're in a different place in our next action-oriented step than we would have been without VTS.
The Coaching Connection: VTS In Practice
I'm drawing correlations to the world of coaching, which is this idea of, you don't come in and say, “Here's what you should do.” Instead, you're opening the aperture a bit and saying, “Let's bring some more light into the room and figure out what's going on. What have you been holding onto? Is that really true? What makes you think that way?” When you do, you start to create new realities through that process that can then lead to better thought processes and better thinking. It's not like you just don't leap in there and do that. I think that the correlation I start seeing is that this, VTS, is another tool, a way of seeing things differently, but you don't leap into an answer from that.
The correlation with coaching is a beautiful one, and thank you, beautifully put. You can change that VTS question. What do you see that makes you say that? to What have you experienced that makes you say that? As a coach, when I'm coaching people in learning to facilitate, it's a very similar process, and helping someone think about, “What are they really saying?” It's all a reframe, but then we paraphrase it back, too. It's listened to again, and it's understood at a deeper level.
We need permission to explore, to be curious—and we need that permission at work too.
There's so much that we can surface through this space that the VTS techniques create. Spaces of, as you put it, spaces of rethinking and describing and naming, and then hearing it named by someone else again. It's very rich. It's slow. I call it slowing down to speed up. If we take time now to really think carefully, be evidence-based, listen to one another, think again, build on each other, let go of ideas that don't stick, move past assumptions, all that stuff, then we're actually moving our work along a lot more.
It also creates a muscle within an organization, within a team, or wherever you're based, to allow these processes to get there faster because we start thinking, “I'm thinking about my thinking in a different way.” Other people in the room who have been schooled in this process can start doing the same, and maybe challenging their assumptions and then moving themselves in a different way through this process.
It takes a little time, but boy, you can build new behaviors and muscles over time through this practice. There's good research on that in healthcare too, the way we teach it with physicians and other healthcare professionals. It's really rich. It's also fun.
I was thinking earlier, one of the touch phrases I love from the founders of VTS, Philip and Abigail Housen, but this phrase is Philip’s. He wrote a book, I think 10ish years ago, about manifesting VTS in schools. He opens it with an anecdote about sitting with his granddaughter and realizing that children need permission to wonder. So do we, adults.
In the business world, I often quote that, and I talk about it: we need permission to explore. We don't give ourselves permission. I think it goes back to when I was in grad school, I felt like I didn't have permission to look deeply and not know yet. I was supposed to know things. I was supposed to be becoming an expert and find gaps. The way I was looking was so narrow and unsatisfying after a while to me. Now I love the richness of all of it. We need permission to explore and be curious, and we need permission to do that at work. We often don't feel we have it.
Permission to Explore: Embracing Uncertainty
I love that you share this, is so wonderful because I was going to say this sounds very familiar. It's like, everyone seems to think that leaders need to know things, but we don't. We need to be able to be okay with that. One of my past guests, Maggie Jackson, who wrote a book called Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, a wonderful book, but she describes uncertainty as a gift. I think that's a wonderful way to look at it, too, is this idea of not knowing is an opportunity. It opens a door.
I've had leaders that I've trained in VTS say to me things like, I remember early on when the global design consultancy I spent years working with very early in that process, one of the very senior directors, he tried VTS and he looked at me and he said, “It's such a relief not to have to tell people what to think or do, but to be present to them. With all my expertise and experience, I can lead, but I don't have to tell or direct, do I?”
I said, “No, you don't. In fact, because you're not doing that and you're holding this space and paying attention to them as they're thinking together, they're learning and becoming better at what they do. If you just tell them and direct them, you're stymying the growth of this team or this group.” It was a very vivid moment. There've been lots of little flashpoints in terms of the way this work has manifested in the business world, because I sure didn't know anything about the business world when I started. Nothing.
I use my VTS skills to listen deeply to the people I'm working with and figure out what resonates and what is meaningful and applicable for them. There've been lots of little flashpoints in that work, too. It was like that moment where someone said to me, I remember a guy from a big investment firm for one of my very first workshops, like ten years ago.
After I finished modeling VTS and they were about to go into breakouts, he raised his hand and said, “Dabney, this was amazing, but I need the five-minute version.” I just stood there and looked at him. He looked at me and he said, “Wait, there probably isn't one, is there?” He's so lovely. I still know him. He told me “That changed my perception of myself as a listener for the rest of my life, VTS, trying that.” A lot of little flashpoints in terms of doing this with people and then I ask them, “what was that experience like for you,” and being radically open to what they say.
I think about what you shared so far is this idea of and you come into this work and you realize, “This is really academic. I'm going to be a professor for the rest of my life.” There's nothing wrong with that, by the way,…
It’s a beautiful life!
But there's an element of realizing that--someone said this to me recently, “How do you turn avocation into a vocation?” You really have turned something into a powerful location that has an impact on people. I think there are a lot of people who get into the field of art, and they struggle to figure out how do I create something that will allow other people to see the impact of what this is. I give you a lot of credit for that.
Thank you. It's been a beautiful adventure and journey, and a scary one at times, too. I like that you're calling it a vocation. I feel like I took this thing that these brilliant people—I’m certainly standing on the shoulders of many people—Phillip and Abigail and many people in between, like at Harvard Medical School, Joel Katz and Shah Khoshbin, people who include Judy Murray, Alexa Miller, and Corinne Zimmermann. There are so many, Peggy Burchenal, Michelle Grohe, Sara Egan. I could go, I should say everybody whose name because I don't forget the people, but there's an incredibly rich community of practice, and leaping, taking it into the business world, into that lane has been a really fun adventure.
I think there are aspects of the VTS process that have emerged from that. I'm excited to see who takes it somewhere new next, but it speaks to the power of this research-based approach. This elegant, very simple, but really hard-to-master way of being in the world. It's so amazing to see it move into different fields and to do it with so many different kinds of people, and help them try it. I'm still learning.
I have so many different directions I want to take you, but there's one thing I want to just ask briefly because I should have asked this earlier. What were your parents, and the environment that you grew up in? How did they feel about you going into this field when you decided to go into the world of art? Was it like, “You're crazy?” Was it like, “Go do your thing?”
It was, “Go do your thing.” My dad was an architect. My parents were each the first in their family to go to college. Lots of people's parents haven't gone to college. I do think that they valued that opportunity and experience. My dad was really good at looking. He lost a lot of his vision because of a chronic illness that he had since childhood. He was very aware of observation and loved designing. As he began to lose that, he talked about it. I think I was aware of that, and like the gift of having eyes. He was also very supportive in terms of, “Go do anything.” My mom, too.
I love that. I always love to hear the origin stories of what are people. The container we get brought up into can have a big impact on how we continue to move forward in our journey.
Building A Vocation: From Art History To Business
I wanted to fast forward into maybe another flashpoint that you wanted to take us in, if there is one. What were the struggles of really taking your business to where it is today? Where is it going next? Where do you see it evolving?
I'm still surprised I have a business. I mean, I'm not. I'm proud of it, and it's been hard work. I think flashpoints in the business work…I talked about some of them, some moments in the experiences, but I've learned so much from partners within my client base. People who saw something in the work that I couldn't see yet helped me knit it together into their context. Those have been a really powerful part of the business.
Also, I just have so much respect for people who build businesses now. It's so challenging. You have to have so many different kinds of minds when you're independent. I mean, you do it too. It's unbelievable what it requires. I think it's challenged me and I've grown so much through it. I've had this privilege, I’ll say, because I'm part of learning and development programs at MIT Sloan and HMS, and then within my client work.
I learned a lot about business by watching other people teach business within those settings. I'm often sitting in a room, and there's somebody amazing giving a lecture about what innovation is. I constantly have my little business brain going to the side and thinking about what I might do next.
I'm writing a book, as I told you. Hopefully, that will keep me moving forward while I'm doing it. I think for me, scale, when I think about how to bring this to more people. One element of VTS that I'm very particular about in the manifestation of VTS is that it's done well. You can read about it and try it, like, you'll read about or see people say, “I'm doing this thing called VTS,” and they're using the three questions, maybe. They're not paraphrasing, they're not linking, they're judging people and their comments.
They're doing a lot of things that actually cause the structure of these rich conversations to collapse a little bit. I have quality. I care a great deal. I have an amazing team of facilitators and coaches who are all really good at all of it, and within that, keeping the quality really high, but trying to help more and more people be able to access and learn it within the professional world is certainly a goal.
Mastering The Craft: The Art Of Quality VTS Facilitation
I love that you share that because there's something about that, which is, oftentimes, the barrier can be especially nowadays, people seem like they can be experts in anything. The reality is that the barrier can be low to get in, but mastery takes years to master anything like this. It's almost like trying to imitate Picasso, but then realizing that you're never going to be quite Picasso because he took so many years to master his craft, and no AI is going to be able to create like him.
No. Why would we even want AI Picasso, right, because he already did it, Picasso! I want what's next from a human. I do. I use AI, and I think AI is amazing, but it does seem that it doesn't really have taste. I'm not that interested in AI making art, although I have used VTS to look at some AI-produced art, and that's been interesting in the business context. I think the real promise of Visual Thinking Strategies within this world we're entering, which is—who knows what this world will really be like? Talk about uncertainty!
I think [VTS] is a chance for humans to be human together and for uniquely human ways of meaning-making. Often with stimuli, when they're great works of art, really wonderful, rich, vivid works of art that were made by a human. It's just so rich. It's about this coming together of all these different ways of sense-making and being in that space for an extended period, our brains are just lighting up all over the place when we're looking at art.
You've had amazing guests on this podcast, like Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross. There's so much growing neuroscientific evidence about the richness of the aesthetic experience when we're looking as well as making, this is multifaceted, but VTS really holds all of us in that experience so deeply. We are changing in our thinking and our meaning-making as we do it every time we do it. It's gradual. I had someone tell me, a client said this, “AI is just going to turn into you.”
I said, “Maybe, but why would you want to do [VTS] with AI?” I guess, maybe? I think there's a space for VTS to help us to hold on to our humanity and love for each other, even our care, our delight in each other, the mystery, the discomfort. All of the things that can come up through and with art, and when we're really with each other, I think VTS can hold that space really beautifully, and that it has an impact on how we work together and how we co-create our future, one that hopefully keeps AI human-centered.
When you describe this, it's like to me, this is the fundamental part of how we work with AI in the future is the ability to come together and make sense together. The human ability of making sense and connection, which is something that there's no AI that's going to truly do that in the capacity that humans can. At least I can never imagine. I'm team human.
I like humans! I like their glorious imperfection, the uniqueness of each of us, and how we've moved through life and make sense of it, and how we can influence each other and help each other or run up against each other and cause friction that's healthy and interesting. I'm fascinated by all that. I think VTS is one way to do it, there are others, but it certainly is a rich, dynamic space where we can—I I always talk about it as a catalyst to help us think about how we're behaving when we're not doing VTS.
That's ultimately the goal. It's not that I want everybody to VTS everything all the time. That would be really hard and exhausting cognitively, but the more we practice this or sit in these spaces together, then when we're not doing it, we're curious about each other because we've just had that experience and we think, “I just learned how to not judge everybody. Maybe I’ll carry that over into this fraught meeting I have, this performance review. Now I know good ways to help someone think again about this thing they're asserting. Maybe I'll do that too.”
When we're really with each other, we discover our delight, discomfort, and the mystery of being human.
That's really my ultimate goal. The first one's always to get people to look at art, which I do every time I touch this. The last one is always, maybe we can behave a little differently when we're not all together anymore doing VTS, in positive ways.
It's such a beautiful concept. I love what you're bringing. Ultimately, art is the doorway, and ultimately it's a way for us to get people to think differently and think again as we keep on referencing that idea. That's actually Adam Grant's book, which is one of my favorites.
Yes! I teach that book and Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. All those things. I feel like this work that I do is about manifesting so much of the great scholarship on what it means to lead or be on a team. I love Amy Edmondson's work. I mean, Linda Hill! Readers, those are all great things to read.
You're dropping all these little breadcrumbs for us.
It's such richness. I think of my work is manifesting and helping people enact micro conversational moves moment to moment, I can help shift how you're showing up so that you can create psychological safety, so that you can lead in a facilitative way, or so that you can navigate ambiguity, which is something VTS beautifully sets physicians up to do. Improve your diagnostic process. All these things. We know from the literature what's needed on leaders and teams and in hospitals and clinics, and VTS is a robust way to help get us there.
I feel like we've just scratched the surface on so many things, but like I could spend hours with you on this topic because it is really a powerful and deep conversation around this tool that we are just talking about. I cannot wait to see your book in the world because I know that it'll be something powerful. No pressure.
Bring it on! I'm excited. I need pressure. It's good.
Recommended Reads: Books And Artists That Inspire
Definitely you've got a reader in me. Definitely going to be the first person to grab a copy. Before we wrap up, though, there's one last question I have to ask, which I ask all my guests, which is around books, which is what are 1 or 2 books that had an impact on you and why?
I have two books and an artist. Is that okay? I'll go really fast. One I have in my hand is called Pictures and Tears by James Elkins from 2001. He's an art historian. Still around, still writing, love his work. It's just a beautiful book about crying in front of paintings. I've cried in front of many paintings, I tell you. That's part of the reason I do what I do. At the back are a bunch of letters that people wrote him about why they do or don't cry. It's just a lovely read.
The other book is fiction. I was going to say Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, but I think other people have said that on this show, so I'm going to second that. I've returned to it again and again, read it with my kid, and will read it for the rest of my life. I was also thinking about Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness from 1969. It's a science fiction novel, and I love science fiction and fantasy. My book club never wants to read those.
You’re in the wrong book club!
No, actually, they're amazing. This book they loved. What I love about fantasy and sci-fi is the world building. The authors get to try a premise or test a bunch of ideas through world-building in this completely alien, invented universe that they create. It's a book about how two beings who are so different and literally from different planets come to understand one another. It's just gorgeous.
Everybody I've ever recommended it to calls me later and says, “That was so good. I cannot believe I didn't want to read it just because it's got that sci-fi label on it.” I consider it a great work of literature. If we want to think about mutual understanding across great difference, then it’s a wonderful book exploring that topic.
Finally, the artist I wanted to bring up is Jenny Saville. She has a big show in London at the National Portrait Gallery. Just invite all, I mean, not everyone can go to London and look at her paintings, but you can look at some online and hopefully find one near you, readers, wherever you are, there are lots in museum collections. I love her work so much because she makes painting that helps us understand why painting is a way to communicate.
You just look at any of them. I'll tell everybody, go to the National Portrait Gallery and there's a painting on the Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting page that I hope will help you as you're looking at everyone think, “What do I see that makes me say that, while I'm looking at it? What more can I find as I look more deeply?” I have a little quote from her.
She's talking about a painting she's in the process of making in this quote, and she says, “There's not enough human there yet. I have to keep going until I bring that out.” Beautiful. I think of my work and your work, we're just trying to be more and more human-centered, be more open and ourselves with each other. I really love that her paintings help us think about that. Sorry, that was a lot. There you go. That's super exciting.
That's beautiful. That quote is just staying with me now, and it's going to be with me all day, if not longer. Dabney, this has been a wonderful conversation. I'm so grateful for the stories, the insights, the inspiration, and all of the things that you've shared. It's been wonderful. Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me. It's a privilege. You're so much fun to talk with you and I feel fortunate to have been on. Thanks, Tony.
Before I let you go, I just want to make sure people know where they can find you. What's the best place to reach out if they want to learn more about your work?
My HaileyGroup.com website, or I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn, so I love getting emails there too. Please reach out, everyone.
Wonderful. Thanks again. Thanks to the readers for coming on this journey. I know you're leaving really inspired and just completely blown away by Dabney's stories and insights. When her book drops, stay tuned. It's going to be a wonderful book. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Important Links
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Maggie Jackson - Past Episode - The Power Of Not Knowing: Embracing Uncertainty For A More Insightful Life With Maggie Jackson
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Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross - Past Episode - Your Brain On Art: How Creativity Transforms Health & Well-Being With Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross
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