Earlier I talked about the amazing painting my wife created for the kids’ room. It was an abstracted guitar in honor of our son’s fascination with that instrument in particular. The next time she painted our son was by her side painting with her, the two of them side by side. After that painting lesson with his mother our son got recognizably “better” at drawing. He intended to making certain marks on the page, in certain colors, in certain places. That whole situation taught me how much children learn from their parents. The things that are demonstrated to us as “normal” become our own normal because our parents made it normal. This sort of defines (in some sense) what we believe as possible, easy, hard, etc. (And, if you didn’t guess yet, that’s why parents are so important). At any rate, my wife continued showing our son what was possible and painted another painting: of a trumpet.
The abstracted and vibrantly colorful guitar she painted inspired her further, probably reminded her of jazz (it reminded me of jazz), and put the idea of a brass instrument into her head. She once again set up her easel, canvas, paints, brushes, and other gear to ready herself for painting. Once again our son was interested. He was ready to watch (or interfere, perhaps). In order to let mom get some work done we travelled to where he could get some crayons and piece of paper to create his own artwork. He carefully selected his colors, carefully placed his marks, carefully decided when he was done with the first work in order to move onto a second sheet of paper. At the end of the day a trumpet was well on its way in paint and several “Untitled” works had been completed by our son. A good day by any artists standards, especially aspiring and new/untrained ones.