Brutal Honesty

I wrote a few days ago about my experience with Johnathan and the artwork we completed together.  And it was a fun, humbling, joyous, exhausting, demanding time.  There were so many emotions floating around me during it I really didn’t know which one was uppermost or the most important.  But we worked together SO well!

Some years ago I created a picture for a friend and thought it was excellent.  I mean, I really did.  The effort I put into it and sent it to her, my inclination was to think it really was wonderful.  I knew that Kevin didn’t think it was amazing, but, you know, I wanted to find out what the friend would pay for it, if I hadn’t done it for free.  She told me that maybe she would pay $30!  OUCH.

Well, I looked at that artwork some years later and I thought “Oh my word!  Did I REALLY think this was great and evoked the sense of a hiding/calm/meditative place?  What was I thinking?”  Quite frankly, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the artwork.  If I could remember who I sent it to, I would apologise to her and ask her if I could send her another that would be much better than the first, but I don’t.  It was 2017 and I don’t even know if I am in contact with the person anymore.

Johnathan was going through the pictures I had made in Procreate on my ipad.  He saw that picture and said “Mummy, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, and I can see what you intended, but it’s so bad I can’t even rescue it for you!”  REALLY OUCH.

I guess the good thing was he saw what I had originally intended for the picture.  Bad thing is he didn’t feel he could rescue it.  It was brutal honestly, and that is what children with autism do.  Black and white thinking.  I had done a bad picture and there was nothing he could do about it.

When I was a very young child, I loved drawing and colouring but as the years went on I stopped - I think somewhere between 8 and 10 years old.  After I arrived in Scotland, I was going to the local centre for disabled people and they encouraged me in art and I realised that actually yes, I AM artistic.  I DO have that kind of creativity.

Now yes, that one piece that I spent so long on was terrible, but the rest of it hasn’t been.  I can’t say they are spectacular, because they’re not.  I have struggled to set aside time to do artistic work, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do it!  It just means that I need to make some time for it.  

However I choose to do it I don’t think really matters.  Will I get everything out and do it physically or will I do it on the ipad?  No idea.  Oh gosh.  Johnathan asked for me to do some watercolours with him next week.  Better get some watercolour paints and paper ready for when Daddy returns to work.  This could be fun!