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A few days ago I posted a blog about painting at the quarry.  Curious people there have watched me do this.  So when I took out my paints today, it seemed all around me were people salivating to paint.  I remembered that a week ago one grandmother told me she could never paint, and I assured her anyone could.  They have all seen the joy painting brings me.  One family has a non-English-speaking eleven year old visiting for the summer, and I could see that color was a universal language.  Some other kids obviously hadn’t had enough opportunities to paint and were starved for it. 

So completely spontaneously, I offered my brush to each of these people in turn, from five years old to grandparent age, and the brush went in a round robin from person to person, each adding a bit of color from my palette to the page. Everyone, including me, gazed on in amazement, to see what would emerge.  I had created a safe, trusting environment.  Some expressed concern over the rough exuberance of the five year old, but his bold strokes not only made the end result so strong, he broke down inhibitions latent in those more tentative. Ten of us each had ten or more turns with the brush, each deciding intuitively what to add next.

This was a happening!  My summer had blissfully emerged into a state of pure flow with those around me!  It was so fun to support them all and give them joy!  Check out the result above, and larger below.  Marvelous!

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