Ask Not What It Is

"Painting is not about perfection or being better than this or that, but is about interpreting in images how I see and perceive things." -- Gerald, on the Painting Forum

When you watch a very small child draw or paint, they're not inhibited by making it look like the real thing. Squiggles of lines can be all sorts of things. It's a putting down on paper of an experience, of what they're seeing or imagining, not trying to replicate reality.

It's only later we learn about paintings supposedly needing to look like something real and start to critique and edit. Part of it is that "What is it?" response adults tend to give when presented with a page covered with squiggles. Rather than saying something more open like "Tell me about your painting".

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