Jonah's Ark

"Mommy's painting."  Since I saw Mica Angela Hendrick's work with her 4-year-old I've wanted to do something collaborative with my son.  He started doing this really awesome drawings about 18 months and I've been collecting them since.  The drawings have changed as he's developed finer motor skills - moving from circles to lines and using more colors.  He has also started connecting his drawings to objects and stories.  This particular drawing (see background) was the result of reading Noah's Ark, and talking about rainbows. So I got out the markers and some paper. "Mommy, draw a rainbow."  I started drawing a typical rainbow, added an ark, and called it a day.  But Jonah, he used each color across the page.  I kept the drawing and started this painting.  The thing I love about this drawing is the way the dots break up all the lines, and the gray mass overlaying the rainbow.  In each of these paintings, I want to make the drawings come alive - pulsating with the contrast between the grays I use in the background and the bright colors typical of crayons and markers, the texture of the paint (the thicker the better), and the use of lines.  I can image a whole series of paintings that create an alternative world.  A world where the energy with which my child has from the moment he wakes up to the his last protest during bedtime emanates from the brushwork, the colors, and the tangibility of the surface.  

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