The Artist's Heart and His Tools

These are watercolors kept in a drawer of art supplies for the grandchildren. What is inside their artist's heart and creator's eye that we cannot see? Similarly, what art might your students create from the raw materials found in your classrooms and stocked in your cabinets? And what if they have crayons, or pen and ink, or chalks, or other mediums, and you are not the art teacher? What if they could create with an artist's eyes and then write about their experiences and share with you and their classmates? Would you value their writer's heart as well as their drawn expressions of whatever prompt you offered, or from a self- selected prompt?

These paints were once new and shiny and contained two brushes. Their holders were stacked neatly, invitingly at the store; just waiting to leave in a plastic or re-usable bag. All that is needed is imagination and a small cup of water, various sorts of paper, and a place to paint. Virginia Wolfe's famous "room of one's own."

And more importantly, a teacher who is willing to open that artist's heart and perhaps find her desks ended in a mess, water on the floor, and a financial tip for the school janitor who follows along behind the classroom, cleaning mistakes that dropped to the floor or groove of a desk.

All artists are like this! They start with bright and shiny ideals, wonderful imaginations, and new supplies. Until the supplies are opened, examined, smelt, touched, turned over, re-examined to determine choice or mixed to form other hues, the artist cannot produce.

The writer is an artist as well! We don't often think of such words to paper as art as readily as we do "standard" mediums. Writers, whose hearts are full, use words they feel have a certain texture or add feel to the finished piece. Those textures may be changed, slightly altered, or cast aside as the written piece comes to fruition. A synonym/antonym dictionary is such a wonderful tool to stretch the writer to empty his heart onto the page. Erasures, white outs, word processing deletions should be available as the writer continues to sculpt their journey. The artist, like the painter, has shiny ideals, vivid imaginations that must be opened, looked at carefully, perhaps smelled (if the paper is unique or if the writer so imagines), Touching the printed word gives opportunity to dislike the current texture and to search for another, more pleasing than the first as the message grows.

When we talk of artists, don't forget the writer. He can certainly be found in middle school hearts if given the chance to create. Sharing the title, a single line, or paragraph validates the writer as an artist.

Memepedia--"Paint with your heart, and you will capture their true Soul."