Water + Pigment somehow = beauty

Painting. Watercolors to be exact. Something I had always done and explored as a child but never really found the meaning of to be honest. Nothing really struck my fancy about them....till now. My school makes Juniors take two semester credits of an "activity" of some sort and only one of them can be off campus. So I stupidly selected my first semester to be my off campus season and was faced with a decision with what to do about this semester. School offers a watercolors course so I decided that it might be a good experience seeing as I'm not taking an art course this year and I truly love to paint. Today though I gained a unique perspective on the power of art and the allure of this watery art form. We went outside seeing as today for the first time this week was beautifully sunny and somewhere in the upper 60's. We went to the "Little School" or the school for boys and girls (seeing as I attend an otherwise all girls school) from infants to prekindergarten. I selected my spot positioned under beautiful blooming magnolia trees to paint a long walk way canopied by these beautiful flowering trees. I was soon greeted by a herd of children ranging in age from four to somewhere around six. It amazed me how many "Whatcha doin?" I got in a single sitting. I found myself at one point surrounded by about fifteen little boys and girls who were completely rapt by what I was doing. They touched the roughness of the watercolor paper and explored the texture of the horsehair burshes in my art box. They were intregued by the straw I use to creat delicate branches and the colors of my palet. It didn't matter what the tree looked liked or where I began, what mattered was that I was creating something with water and pigment that could let thier imaginations run rampid. These fifteen little children opened my mind to what art does for the soul. It gives us an outlet for our imaginations, it's open for interpretation, and not a person in the world can tell you that what you have created is in any way incorrect because what you create is simply yours and yours alone. I smiled more than I have in a while in that half an hour I sat there and painted for them today. I simled at their giggles when I blew a dot of brown color across a page with a straw. I smiled at their wide eyes when I opened my "box of tricks," and I laughed with them as I watched them paint their imaginery trees with my brushes. Art connects us all in some way or another. Today it connected me with fifteen little faces I may not remember, but will remember the laughs and smiles they let me share with them all from water, pigment, and a piece of white paper.