Have we lost our inner child?

Has a critique early in life broken our creative spirit?

It started with a feeling. That is what I wanted to capture. As we cut out our eyes, trunk and ears, it was time to put them all together. I looked around and everyone was placing them in just the right places. But I knew better.  I glued them on the construction paper out of place, angled in the wrong direction and bent in some places. What resulted looked like a collaboration between Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Because I did not follow directions in art class, I received an NI, which stands for “Needs Improvement.” I was taught that doing it like everyone else was right and being different was wrong. I eventually started doing art like I was supposed to and that destroyed my interest in it until after high school.

No one ever asked me why I made my construction paper elephant that way. I made it that way because the elephants I saw at the zoo were sad and I was like them. This art project was about expressing an emotion and connecting another creature on this earth with my experience growing up. That connection was dismissed by adults that didn't take an interest in what this project meant to me. It makes me wonder how many young creative talents have been broken or destroyed by the critique of an adult?

In some ways, I still feel like that child. Many around me really do not understand what I’m doing with my art and sadly won’t take the time to ask me. They instead look at it with wandering eyes if they look at it at all. Some make prejudgments about it and me. That’s why I’m grateful for those that did take the time to listen to what I’m trying to say. I have my first solo art exhibit coming up and have a radio interview about it.  I’m happy to report this show will be different than the other figurative works people may have seen!

I believe we are all artists in our own way. The exploration of our talent  can be be a difficult road because it opens us up to ridicule and critique. But it also offers a tremendous opportunity to invite people to look at the world and themselves in a different way. Have dismissive adults caused us to lose the inner child: the one that allows us to use imagination to create beauty from deep within ourselves?  Like all lost things, our inner child can be found again. It might take a patient mentor that encourages us to start up again. Are there people in our lives today that need us to do just that?