I just want to express myself!!

It started out wonderful, typical of Miss Reno/Sparks aka Princess Sara.

We read all about space and stars and made a corresponding sparkly star necklace...

But then it turned horribly wrong... I present to you Latina Satan.

Notice how she holds the heart of a throbbing child yearning to just enjoy art? I digress...

Library was offering a free art program. It started with my daughter (Christina) painting a beautiful yellow sun after 15 minutes of pure babbling (Art is about patience, you need to paint one color at a time, wait 10 minutes and paint another color. Slowly. You need to be slow.... Did I mention there were probably 20 3-6 year olds there? Perhaps Latina Satanica would flow better) Anywho, LS grabs the paintbrush out of Christina's hand (You can see her above doing the same to another child) and proceeds to say, "That's an OK sun, but you need to paint the whole picture yellow now."

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Really?

So I tell LS that her sun is beautiful and that art is art. We get heated fast. LS is one of those eccentric control freaks who never learned that art is subjective, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. She says children should learn technique or quote "They'll never win any competitions." Oh my gosh! (Picture me screaming as if a house is on fire!) Why did I not think of that Satanica? Oh why oh why oh why? Now I get it. We need to squish the fun out of art and make them into competitive lil' demons who feed off the praise and glory of adults. What. On. Earth. Have. I. Been. Thinking. I'm such a moron.

Now, would I normally be this harsh. No. But she took the paint brush out of my child's hand and painted over it. The room went silent as our voices raised. And the funny part was Maria was painting merrily along and chiming in rather aggressively, "I just want to express myself!" A lady rushed over after the eccentric just refused to even "talk" to me anymore and apologized, she of course wants children to enjoy the process of art... blah blah blah. We finish painting (with acrylics mind you... 2 little girls were dressed in expensive princess costumes from earlier... got it all over them....we came prepared with aprons) AND THEN they ask us to leave the art there.

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Ugh, anyone? Anyone?

Needless to say I ripped my children's art off the table and we headed out without saying thank you. Ok. We said thank you, I mean, we have to be civil. But as we were heading out and mommy was explaining all about Picasso and how people never appreciated his artwork until he was dead, but he did it his way and now look at his art... Christina piped in, "Mom, we should totally go back and tell her that I won a coloring competition and I won it because I colored the way I wanted to, not the way she told me."

Bam. Boo Ya. Well said child, well said.