Beautiful Mess

I have started taking my daughter to a new Playgroup each week. Here, there are always a couple of craft tables, some areas for imaginative play and the session is finished with a snack and singalong. 

Upon our arrival each week, my girl heads straight for the messiest activity – usually painting. She loves to wrap herself in the mustard-yellow plastic aprons and lose herself in a whirl of paints, crayons and glue. This week we spent a happy age potato printing. The session supervisor had laid out a demonstration page of each shape neatly printed and then artfully shaded with a delicate strokes of a paintbrush. Of course, this prim example was way beyond the capabilities of the group of toddlers and I studiously ignored it as a frankly ridiculous marker. To me, the point of the session was not a neat painting, but rather a fun-filled messy play. And my giggling, creative daughter, already elbow-deep in bright orange paint, seemed to agree.

However, I was dismayed as some of the other zealous parents strived to drive their children’s art towards the perfect. Two year olds were left watching from the sidelines as parents manipulated the molded potato shapes into structured prints. Children’s chubby hands were encased in their carers’, as the paintbrushes were guided into the “correct” pictures. Once each print was completed, paper was whisked away so the little one didn’t “ruin it” .

On the gluing table, a little girl was scolded for using the glue stick on the paper rather than on the shape to be stuck, and she was chastised for having the picture upside down. One parent started to neatly pile matching shapes so the children would only use one of each (unlike the 3 or 4 that my girl had).

At the end of the session, I looked over all of the completed artworks, pegged to dry on a washing line by the sun-filled window. Each sheet looked pristine, clinically perfect, and each was emblazoned with a child’s name written on by their proud parent.

And there, at the end of the washing line, hung my daughter’s picture. Dripping with a rainbow palette of thick poster paints, there was no mistaking its creator. The shapes made by the thick slabs of potato cut-outs were interlaced with swipes of wild brush strokes and tiny indiscernable fingerprints, where she had gleefully dipped her digits into the paintpots. Thick globules of glue stuck like crystals to the paper.

I gladly and joyfully wrote her name on the art, and dated it. It was so perfect in its imperfection. Her beautiful mess. This is the creativity of my baby aged 2.5 years.