Experiencing Colour

For years bringing watercolour painting to the children felt stressful.

I didn’t feel equipped or in possession of enough talent to actually teach my children to paint. I didn’t have a deep enough relationship to colour to help them build their own relationship to colour.

I felt I was muddling through.

Until finally, at the beginning of my son’s second year, I decided enough was enough and made a goal to shake this ridiculous mindset. You know what I discovered? You don’t need to be equipped with anything other than the will to try and you don’t need talent.

I don’t have proper paint boards or “Waldorf approved” paint brushes and paint jars. I didn’t use Stockmar or any other “Waldorf approved” paint brand. Heck, I don’t even have the correct shade of blue! I purchased my watercolour paper from a big box store and kept those corners pointy. I was everything “Waldorf” wasn’t. We still are.

And you know what?

It still works.

We are still able to experience the magic of colour. I discovered my fears weren’t that I didn’t know what I was doing. My real fear was that I didn’t know what the colours would do. I did not have a true understanding of the quality of colours, where their boundaries are, how they interact with each other. I didn’t know because I didn’t have any life experience with them. Yes, I did the whole colour mixing experiment in grade school. But that was taught to me, it isn’t something I experienced. I didn’t get the chance to literally pull orange from red, or to see how green just sinks away into blue.

Using colour isn’t something that can be taught, it needs to be EXPERIENCED. It needs to be felt. I understand that now. And when I invite my children to paint, I know that I’m giving them the opportunity to experience so much more than painting.

They will understand colour.

They will have FELT it, changed it, worked with it.

It will be a part of them, just like it is becoming a part of me.

Until next time,
Marina