One Work: Happiness in Purple

This follows Paul Stewart's brilliant post about Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (30).

Paul notes how uneducated and intellectually lazy people try to put down art they don't understand by saying things like "My kid could do that."

Did you not read Paul's story yet? Please, go ahead and do it now.

Go, go!

I'll wait.

It was good, wasn't it?

You're welcome!

I'm doing my own weirdo thing of taking a sentence out of context and reflecting on it. Because it sparked this train of thought, but also as an excuse to show you all what my kid can do.

But Sasha, all kids do this! I know, but I'm a proud mamma.

My little guy has shown an interest in the arts quite early on, producing amazing masterpieces like "Yoghurt on Table" and "Marker on Wall"; the latter is a collaboration with Mamma, who thought uncapping a marker in front of the whiteboard was safe.

For his first birthday, some good friends of ours gifted him big, bright, washable (my doors are eternally grateful) pencils.

10 of them.

But he's only interested in the one: purple.

Maybe he understood that "purple is mamma's favorite color" and is trying to do something nice for me... or maybe his love for our vacuum cleaner (which has a bright and shimmery purple stick) has transferred to the pencils.

We'll never know.

But purple is the only color he wants to draw with.

And that expression of pure ecstasy that appears on his face once the tip of the pencil hits the paper is everything.

Oh, that expression! I'm hogging and cataloguing it in my brain to live off the warmth of it once the famine of affection of his teens arrives.

He transferred that happiness on paper.

I transferred that paper on the fridge.

When I make breakfast for him, and he sits on my arm, he points at his "artwork" and giggles. I hope he feels how proud I am.

I surely feel how proud he is.

And I want him to keep that pride, that confidence, the intrinsic motivation to pursue his interests and fire up his curiosity.

All kids have it.

Show me a child who doesn't enjoy spreading colors everywhere, and I will weep for the end of mankind. Kids don't care if it makes no sense or isn't "pretty". And they don't need anyone's approval to keep doing it.

The act of creating is its own reward.

It's amazing how natural art comes to us, people.

And how "naturally" we lose it growing up...

How many of us lost the joy of creating because one idiot too many said we weren't good enough? Or because we stopped experimenting, seeking the praise for doing it "right"?

Circling back to Paul's post, "Anyone's kid could do that"... if their inner spark endured through criticism and praise alike.