color outside the lines if ya want to!

a memory i have from about 3rd grade: our teacher, mrs. cox, gave us a class project in which we were to create a robot out of cardboard boxes. we were encouraged to use our imaginations and we were also assigned a partner. my partner’s name was “summer” and i remember that she was intimidating to me because she was very loud, talkative, outgoing and very pretty. and she knew it. as an aside, i distinctly recall her telling off a classmate in the girl’s bathroom bc the girl questioned why her mother named her summer. she said “what was i supposed to do? raise up and slap my mother when she named me?” i have never forgotten that for some reason. maybe bc i thought that was a pretty kickass reply to an annoying classmate’s question. i admired summer until the day we created our robot together. i don’t recall much about the robot or the creation of it or even what it looked like. what i do remember is how she made me feel and how it affected the way i did things for a long while. we were each using crayons to color the robot. and i was doing my thing...going to town with lots of colors and big ol marks and color splashes of bright reds and blues and such. my lines were going everywhere and in every direction i guess and this displeased summer very much. she stopped me in the middle of my picasso style euphoria and said “stop that! don’t you know you’re supposed to stay in the lines?! do it like this!”, and she proceeded to demonstrate her perfect execution of very controlled, lightly applied pastel blues and pinks. heck! i didnt even realize there WERE lines up til this point! hahahahaha!!!! i felt ashamed and deflated at that point. i don’t remember ever feeling that creative joy again until i was much, much older. like, in my 30’s. because i always held on to that “you have to stay in the lines” mentality. i have posted a painting from 9/2014 which demonstrates one of the times i really enjoyed myself. this was really the beginning of enjoying art for art’s sake again. i sold this painting not long after i created it and that was very encouraging. since then i have tried to remain true to my own flow and i hope i never meet a “summer” again.