Family Masterpiece Part 1

I have put off actually sitting down and writing this blog for forever and a day… but my soul and my heart kept nagging me to start… begin your creative journey Marcia, document it, it kept saying… but my head was like, it has to be perfect you need the perfect space, the perfect activity etc… excuse after excuse after excuse… am good at that I talk myself out of somethings with the belief of it needing to be perfect.. same with motherhood am often hard on myself about what “my idea of an ideal mom” should do and then beat myself up when I don’t reach that idea… no one says it should be that way but in my head I often come up with these crazy expectations that I have to consciously be aware of…so as part of my reflex action I automatically followed my head like I always do trying to create a more creative art space, pinning ideas… but all of which never materialized cause with three kids every time I tried to tidy the art room they went in and wanted to play…and I pinned more than I actually did anything…

So finally I decided let’s just have a family braai and paint with the kids and take it from there… my idea was to do a “Family Masterpiece”, one painting done by all the kids but afterwards can be taken apart so each family member can have a piece of the puzzle so that we are all connected through one art piece… and so the journey to create the masterpiece began…

The day arrived and family was arriving one by one and the artroom was a mess like it always is and the family didn’t care like they always do… and we just painted and let the painting evolve as we went along…

The great part about our family always arriving at different times (AKA late??) meant the kids painted on the base of canvases individually which meant the paint had time to dry before the next one painted and it added different dimensions to the painting rather than the paint smooshing all into one colour…

Once every kid had a chance to paint on every canvas it was time for the parents to get involved with the kids.. inspired by Jackson Pollock we took the canvases outside and let loose and did some splatter painting… nothing short of messy but the fun is well worth it…

To see how this perfectly imperfect art piece turned out… keep reading onto part two.. I promise it’s worth it…!! ?

Love