Not My Canvas

“It never turns out the way I imagine it,” she says, with tears in her eyes and disappointment on her face.

It's 2022, my seventh year of homeschooling, and I'm trying something new by starting each homeschool day with art. I provide a steady rotation of sculpting and sketching prompts, with a once-a-week watercolour painting date thrown into the mix when I’m feeling brave.

It’s time consuming and messy, and I am not great at coming up with creative and thought provoking prompts unless “paint something with a bird” counts, but we are doing it and my kids sometimes even tear themselves away from their elaborate creative games to start school for the day with only a few complaints. (Math worksheets do not have this same effect.)

Somewhere between the squabbles over who gets the first paintbrush cup and my confiscating the (now empty) cup and dripping watercolours set from the four year old, the creativity flows.

We sketch sunsets in monochrome, add paint to wet paper, follow step-by-step instructions in painting books, and sculpt friendly monsters out of playdoh. Without fail, one child’s art features Minecraft or animals, another tries to capture life in as many intricate details as possible, and the third goes for the abstract look.

One child in particular often knows exactly how her art should turn out. This morning’s watercolours bleed into each other in chunky paintbrush strokes and don’t fulfill her very specific vision.

It’s not good enough, not turning out the way she expected. She wants to start over.

She needs a hug and to shed a few tears. I need to chat with her about disappointment.

(I have other children whose post-art life skills chats involve advice about the value of taking a break and not painting holes into your paper out of frustration, but that is a story for another day.)

We discuss how things don’t always turn out the way we envision. We chat about how sometimes starting over is ok and other times changing nothing is okay too, that there is value and beauty in the imperfect.

She thinks I am talking about painting, that I am giving art advice. But I am also talking about life.

I’m talking about how everything changes when we’re handed a blank canvas swaddled in a striped flannel hospital blanket.

I’m talking about how parenting books and the internet and well-meaning family members provide step-by-step instructions for painting these canvases ourselves, with a side of pressure to avoid the brushstrokes of “bad” sleep habits and less than optimal feeding choices and a child who hasn’t added academic prowess or a dozen friends or employable skills to his or her resume before the age of three.

I'm remembering teaching high school, pregnant with my first and clueless about parenting, chatting with one of my high school students about his future aspirations. “My parents say I’m going to be a doctor,” he said. He didn't seem to wish this for himself, but he felt their insistence that he fulfill their dream.

I'm reliving the elbows and heels pressing into my ribs. I'm wishing for the ability to resist painting her canvas myself, even when I think I know better. I'm understanding that I will do this imperfectly, but I have to try.

So, the years pass. I become the supplier of paints and the washer of paintbrushes and the wiper of the paint splattered table. I become the one who hands out aprons and refills the water. I make observations. I tell stories. I wipe tears and listen to frustration. I encourage. I even paint alongside them sometimes. I am, without a doubt, shaping their masterpieces.

But, I'm not holding the paintbrush.

By: Kate Croft