THE PAINT PALETTE

On one of my trips to the U of A Hospital with my daughter and my grandson, I happened to pass by the McMullen Gallery just inside the main entrance. What caught my eye was all the paintings of trees hanging in the windows and visible on the walls beyond.

Of course, I just had to pay a visit.

It was very interesting to see all the different interpretation of trees and it was lovely to see this calm and quiet place in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the U of A.

Although the show is only on until Aug 24th – and the U of A is not usually a “destination”, if you ever happen to be close to Whyte Ave and have a half an hour; it would be worth the trip to see this exhibition.

My suggestion though, is to park in the parking lot across from the Mac’s store on 112 St then walk the two blocks to the main entrance.

I have included the website address

I had the pleasure of babysitting my four year old grandson and my three year old granddaughter on Monday.  I took a brave step and ask them if they wanted to paint which of course they readily accepted. 

I ferreted out my acrylic tubes, sheets of cartridge paper (22 x 30 – if they are going to paint, they may as well go big!) some brushes I didn’t mind them using and a couple of sheets of disposable palette paper. 

I squeezed them each some blobs of color depending on their preferences and they set out painting on the plastic covered dining table with Grandma close by to watch for spills and splatters. 

So in they dug.  My grandson produced one 22 x 30 sheet completely covered with a kalidescope of different colors – not a speck of white to be seen.  It took him about an hour of deciding which color to put where.  It was really quite lovely.  We then took a second sheet and put it over top the first one, used a roller (which was Grandma’s way of getting some of the excess paint off the painting so it could be taken home later in the day) to make a second painting from the first.  He promply announced that that one was for his brother Will.

Gracie, my three year old grandaughter produced about 8 paintings.  Her approach was to drag the brush into the blobs of paint and put them onto the paper then go back for another color.  Soon she had a mixture of every different color in her brush.  It took everything I had NOT to clean that brush.  Pretty soon, I realized that she was making the most amazing NEUTRALS; beautiful mixtures of color that she was applying haphazardly to the paper.  I sat in awe of the multitude of different colors she was producing and came to the realization that maybe we all need to paint like a 3 year old  – just dip out brushes until we have every color on our palettes in different places on our brush then apply that mix to paper and see what comes out.  We might just surprise ourselves at the beauty we can create. 

As I sat there, I found out something about myself.  I need to be freer.  I need to put my brush in the colors and let them mix on the paper and see what happens. 

Gracie and Mark were so proud of their paintings – they were really just color on paper, but they were allowed to be free and do what they wanted with just a little hovering from Grandma. 

So I challenge myself and all of you to let go, paint like a three year old and see if you don’t learn something about yourself.