On kids and their Art (and our first contest!)

My firstborn was never interested in painting or drawing, a fact I sometimes pondered as I scanned him for possible anomalies in his human coding. Isn’t painting one of those things ALL kids do? Why doesn’t he paint? Eventually, I filed these questions away in the Box of Unsolvable Life Mysteries, and life rolled on in a blur of toilet training, shoe sizes, doctor’s checkups, and new words.

Then, at four, he started school — and one afternoon, he came home with a drawing. And not just a drawing, but ART, with all the letters capitalized.

A blue, centered mass hovered in the middle of the page, ringed by yellow dots and tethered to a pale grey streak. A dash of pink and orange balanced the whole thing, and his name — in his first determined pencil letters — sketched vertically down the side.

“You made this?”
“Yeah,” he said. (Kids, always economical with language.)
“Well… this is kind of good.”

And it truly was. I wasn’t a desperate adult praising a drop of water in the desert — I was genuinely impressed by his instinctive sense of color, balance, and composition.

For a while after that, our little Pollock regularly appeared with new abstract creations, usually on large A3 paper, each one different in palette, arrangement, and mood. Thoughtful choices, playful experimentation — and to our delight, a kind of quiet wonder.

Eventually, the paintings stopped. I’m not sure when. By then, I had a second child, and my attention was divided between naps, diapers, numbers, letters, and all the dozens of things kids are expected to master.

And then my daughter — now just under three — started school. Guess what she brings home now, rolled into a tube every so often? Yes: child-made modern art, uncannily reminiscent of her brother’s early work. But hers are darker, more vibrant, more chaotic — even a bit aggressive. They say: I want to live loud. I’m stomping my foot at life.

I like it. It is very her.

You’ve probably heard the claim that all kids are artists. It sounds simple, almost cliché, but those are Picasso’s words. Somewhere deep inside our proto-adult selves lives a need for creation — to express something through color and form. Knowing how to draw is one of those skills I wish I had developed. It would have come in handy when I’m asked to draw a cat or a mermaid, only to produce disproportionate little creatures fit for a Tim Burton cameo.

I know my kids won’t become prodigy artists, and art will likely fade from their lives as their real callings take shape. But there are two things I want to carry with me from their early paintings:

First, that art gave me a glimpse into their inner worlds — the ones that bloomed when I wasn’t looking, honest and unapologetic.

Second, a hope: that one day, when they’ve become cemented adults, if life feels too heavy, they’ll reach for a brush and throw color onto paper. And in that moment, art will have fulfilled its purpose.