artfest class #3 all a' flutter

My third and final art class was called all a' flutter taught by the incredible Mindy Lacefield
get ready for a long post:)


* I wanted to add that Mindy is teaching an online course paint your story still time until April 16th to sign up I highly recommend her as a teacher!!

above) Mindy doing her magic

below) a sweet classmate explaining her beautiful paintings(and then photos of other's artwork) we did a show and tell at the end of class

This class started out where we closed ours eyes and a beautiful young woman named Jenny (you can see her photo on Mindy's blog here)

I was so touched by Jenny's voice it was truly one of those voices that gives you chills and after she finished singing she shared a story of how for many years she didn't sing because someone had criticized her voice...it was a powerful story.


Right after this Mindy asked us to draw something from our childhood. I started drawing without really thinking about what I was drawing and before I knew it this woman came up on my paper. Here is the strange part I realized as I was drawing her that I used to draw her all the time around the age of four. Then I realized that when I was drawing her (back when I was four ) that I was drawing myself....what I was going to look like as a woman now. I was going to be wearing colorful clothes, long skirts with flowers on them and I always drew her wearing little brown boots. There she was with her crooked smile just like mine. Now here is where it gets even weirder back in November I brought myself some little brown boots for work, and I have worn them everyday since.  They make me feel great, sort of like a child might carry around a blanket.....they are such a part of me....at the artfest people kept stopping me and saying "I love your little boots." I kept responding "Thank you, me too." because I truly do! Maybe, now that I think about it they are like Dorothy's ruby reds they take me home......to me.


Anyway, I was sitting here drawing this realizing all of this and looking around the room wondering if the same thing was happening to my classmates. At lunch I shared this with my teacher she said please share all this later with the class.
I continued to work on my painting I wanted to add a bird, after all this was a class about painting birds:) 


This is my favorite painting to date. I put a pink flamingo in my painting at this age(four) this was my favorite bird I loved them and thought about them all the time. On top of it's head is a bird in leg warmers, I needed some silliness because this is a part of me too.
I have a little bit of Europe in the painting because this is also a piece of me now. Green has always been my favorite color.


I shared my painting at the end of class and couldn't help but to start to cry.....not because I was sad just the opposite, I was so happy, happy to see that the little four year artist knew who she was going to be and that she would still be smiling her crooked smile.
The other part that made me happy is that I remember drawing her hanging upside down out of the sky sometimes and once my sisters said mom katy is drawing her people upside down again and my mom said if katy wants to draw her people upside down then she can draw them upside down. She said it in that mom voice that is trying to keep the peace between kids.
But my four year old artist self smiled her crooked smile and knew she could draw however she wanted.