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Weeds and Wildflowers Prompt: Perspective
How Picking Up my Watercolors Has Changed my Perspective
The whole world looks like a painting to me
When I was a little girl, my mother bought me a set of watercolor paints. I remember the thrill of swishing my wet brush around to get lots of paint on it and then using it to create houses, birds, big yellow suns and little girls in red dresses. I never stopped to wonder if what I was painting was “good.” I wasn’t focused on the result. I was having fun! I painted with freedom and joy.
As I got older, I continued to paint, but at some point the freedom was gone. I judged everything I painted against a standard that was arbitrary, but felt real. My work was not so good. It was sometimes downright terrible. I felt frustrated and ashamed and put my paints aside.
Over the years I dabbled, took a few classes, painted with a group of ladies who were all better than me, but always, in the end put the paints away in disappointment. It seemed that painting the way I wanted to was only a dream, and I just didn’t have it in me to create something I would be proud of.
I have never stopped longing to paint what I see around me. I turned to other ways to express my creativity, but the desire to paint has never left me. I…
