“I painted the girl who painted the guy who painted the other guy’s mom who painted an egret,” he wrote.
This is such a cool story: A son posted his nervous mother’s painting online and it set off a chain reaction of creativity. It all started with a guy sharing a picture of his mom holding a painting of hers that she thought no one would like. And then the creativity began to flow.
This month here at Onward, we are focusing on the habit of play and create and the role that art pays in that creativity. This mother could have benefited in the first place from this message that Elena Aguilar shares in Chapter 10 of Onward: If you have a fear of art, if your immediate response is, “I’m not an artist” or “I’m bad at art,” there is help for you. First you might reframe your definition of art and what it means to create it.: Remember, you are not aspiring to create objects to display in a museum. You must rein in your perfectionist tendencies, your insecurities about what others will think, and your fear of failure….I’ve met many people who were afraid of making art, but after exploration, they liberated their creative souls and found a means of expression.”