Reclaiming Joy

A quiet sort of revolution

As a kid in Primary 1, I remember one of my school supplies was a cheap palette of watercolor paints and a single plastic paintbrush.

Up till that point, I had no real concept of art. Sure, we did coloring and drew pictures of our families as scraggly stick figures with oversized eyes and creepy grins but that was the extent of it that I recall.

So I was excited about Art being one of the classes in my weekly schedule in “real school”.

I don’t even remember the first Art class we had or what we were tasked to do.

I only remember that I had followed the instructions to the best of my abilities (my eager-to-please tendencies started young) and used my watercolors as well as I knew (not very) to create something soggy, streaky, and probably objectively not beautiful at all.

What I do remember was feeling pleased about smushing the little watercolor cakes with my paintbrush gripped too tighter in my little hand and watching them turn into little melty puddles of color.

What I do remember w…