Colorful pastel painting portraiture’s of young children and teens facing difficult choices in a world of limitless possibilities.
This image is titled “Tree people” and is dedicated to a very young girl living at the Santa Ysabel Reservation. I met her while teaching a combined martial arts, creative arts and meditation class.
I asked them to meditate on an object of their choice with their eyes open – looking at it for 5 minutes – a material object like a tennis shoe, tee shirt, flower, tree … then draw what was observed about that object, like what it is made up of for instance… they were estentially free to make up their own stories. Later we talked about our drawings.
She drew a tree in the center of the page, and had many lines radiating out from that tree, one to the sun and rain clouds, and one to the house she lives in, to the timber and wood from the trees, and connecting it to the forest and the many things living there, but the most beautiful part of her drawing were the people she drew as trees, and the trees as people, she made a clear distinction between the two. She talked about how everything is connected and how we can appreciate that, and that appreciation is felt, by many things other than humans.
This drawing is for you.
