MELISSA MCPHEETERS
Link: https://fb.watch/4tOQsIWWP2/
Once upon a time, I was five years old. I was in kindergarten and we were doing a worksheet learning about the letter B. And to do the learning about the letter B, one of the worksheets was a piece of paper that had a picture of a bee on it, like a buzz buzz bee, and the assignment was to color the bee yellow. And my peers and I at my table, we were very very concerned about coloring every piece of that bee yellow, just as we had been directed. A few minutes had gone by and the teacher came over because she had expected that we had moved on into the packet, farther than coloring this bee. I don’t remember much, but I just remember that she was upset, she was very disappointed that we were still coloring the bee, and that we had taken her directions so seriously.
I don’t know that that was when my sort of challenge with art started, but my mom would do my coloring assignments that were homework for me, after that point because I was just so opposed to, opposed to doing coloring.
A few years went by and my grandma would take my brother and I to art classes. They were not something I was interested in, I did not look forward to them. It didn’t feel like it came easily to me and so it was just really hard. It came easily to my brother, it came easily to my dad, to my grandfather; they were all artists, are artists. I just did not have a very good relationship with art for a very long time.
So then fast forward to last year, around April-May 2020, and I was working from home. We were amidst the pandemic. A good friend of mine who is an artist, has been an artist since I’ve known him, he encouraged me to just try it. To just try to do some art. And I wasn’t very intrigued, but with his encouragement I finally decided “what could be the worst thing that happens?” I do it and I’m bad at it, and I just confirm what I already knew and that’s okay.
So I didn’t really tell anybody that I was going on this mission to do some art, I think my parents knew and so I got some canvases, I got some paint, and set up some tv trays, and put on Bob Ross. And that was when I painted my first painting!
And I realized that I love art. It has just been really interesting to go from this place where I was not interested in it. I would color with my grandmother, as an adult. But to actually do painting and decide what I want to put on the canvas and what I’d like to see it become and be able to do that has been very empowering. It’s also been something that has been very life-giving for me. And that’s something I’m really trying to focus on in my life is the things that are life-giving and rewarding to me.
So now I have a much more positive relationship with art and it’s just something that means a whole whole lot to me in a way that it didn’t before.
