Sometimes you get inspired. It can happen at any moment for any reason (conscious or not), and when the inspiration strikes you’d better get to work, or at least have a notebook handy to write down and record what particularly inspired you. I’m not sure our little son has experienced anything (at least outwardly) that we might recognize as “inspiration,” but it does seem that he gets hooked on an idea about something to try (maybe climbing something really high up and jumping) and he does his best to make it happen at that very moment. Mom did get inspired recently. Perhaps it is the new life growing inside of her. Perhaps it is a new location (and opportunity) for another room for her children. Perhaps it is just that the season for a full-time teaching job has started without her (something we’re both happy about). Whatever the reason: Mom got inspired to paint, and paint she did.
But what would she paint? Well, I won’t go into what she painted for our second child (though it is also amazing and wonderful). Our son has a penchant for music — particularly the guitar — so she set out to paint for him an image of a guitar and hang it on the wall. Her goal was one of relative abstraction in the image with lots of primary colors. It really looks great. When our son first saw it he said, “guitar!” Quite a happy moment for all of us. It started the “instrument period” in my wife’s artistic progression. She’s since done a trumpet and will probably move onto other instruments soon (I’m think that drums will be next since our son loves them so much). At any rate, the guitar painting hangs proudly in our son’s room. He really does enjoy it. One day I hope he’ll only appreciate it more because his mother made it for him. Time will tell.