MotherSoup

Nobody told me that:

• Good art isn’t always neat
• Never risking wasting materials means never having the chance to experiment
• Realism has it place, but good art doesn’t always look real

At least, nobody ever told me that early enough. And the artists who could have shown me - like Rembrandt above - I didn’t get to know until too late.

Now I feel too flippin’ ingrained and entrenched to develop artistically, and I get too cross with what I do produce to feel much satisfaction.

But I spent a happy holiday, quite some time ago, with one of the Offspring, working through ideas in the Usborne Art Treasury. This fun book looks at and explores a huge range of art works, and then provides a project inspired by that work - but in no way copying it. Some projects could be tackled by preschoolers. Some would challenge a high school art pupil. They certainly challenged me!

I do hope that my kids can keep hold of the spontaneity that was inhibited out of me.