50 and beyond

I am lefthanded. But contrary to the common belief that lefties are creative and artistic, I am terrible in art and craft and in particular drawing and painting. I recall attending painting classes every Saturday afternoon at an art school situated at Chip Bee Gardens when I was young. How I disliked my classes and how I wished I was enrolled in the ballet class next door instead.

Yes, I can crochet pretty well, but no creativity is involved in crochet. I don’t create my own patterns. Instead, I follow a pattern rigidly.

Yes, I used to play the piano, the classical guitar, and now, the drums, but again, all of this is just about practising and reproducing a sound by sightreading. I have never composed my own music and have no interest yet in this. Copying work does not involve creativity.

I recently attended a session on coffee painting. When I first heard of this session, I was quite excited. I thought I was going to boil milk and use the foam to create a beautiful image of a swam floating atop a cup of cappuccino. But oops, I didn’t read the brief before attending the session. Coffee painting is about using a paintbrush and using coffee powder as ink to paint. Oh man, where is the fun in that, I thought to myself when I found out.

But you know, the session turned out to be so therapeutic for me. It was meaningful because we were first asked to think about think about what we thought of ourselves before and what has changed over time and write it out on a sheet of card.

I used a paintbrush and wrote on my sheet that I had low self esteem when I was young. I used to always feel inferior towards others because I was short (still am), and I felt stupid and ugly.

Next, we were use a paintbrush to brush over the words and paint an image as to what we think of ourselves now.

Of course, having no creativity, I used my phone to search for Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and tried to replicate it. Here it is.

We were asked to share why we chose to paint what we did.

My answer: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers must have looked very ugly to the audience of that day who were of the Impressionist tradition. But he was revolutionary in the way he expressed himself. Today, we see Sunflowers as beautiful and vibrant. I identify with Sunflowers because while I felt lousy about myself, God drew me this way for a reason. In His eyes, I am His creation and made in His image. Today, I am also happy because I married the most wonderful man in the world who loves me even though I am short. And he doesn’t make me feel stupid and ugly.

But really, the real reason why I painted Van Gogh was because we were all given 15 minutes to come up with a painting and for some reason, the first image that came to mind was Sunflowers.

You like it? It was done in 15 minutes. And mind you, it’s not about creativity again because I copied it!