In our kitchen it’s like the fridge has a sign that says Post No Bills.

Oh it’s adorned with the typical magnets (my favourite is a cucumber chillin’ and above in big letters it exclaims COOL AS A) and phone numbers and appointments…all well and good.  But it’s bare from art.  Not Van Gogh or Picasso but the honest scribbles of an earnest child.

It used to be good enough to madly scribble lines and have the budding artist point out: that’s our house.  Oh yeah, adults will say though all they see is directionless lines.  Never did aesthetic enter into the conversation, how could you debate taste with a child? It used to be enough that we made art, that we busted out the coloured paper and markers (with all those marvelous smells) and tried to create something.

We didn’t wait for inspiration, just opportunity to draw.  To create.  Creativity was as natural to us as breathing…and as uncomplicated.

Sadly somewhere along the way the scribbles no longer cut it.  It wasn’t art it wasn’t even…good.  What?  Why not?  Who says?  Why was it good enough back then to be proudly displayed on the fridge but now is worthless and really should be hidden from human eyes?

I want my scribbles to remain relevant…like true art does.  It’s not about aesthetic or even an attempt to achieve realism.  It’s a celebration of imagination of creativity for this is how God has made me.

Art is nothing but creativity and the means of expression be that a film or a painting or a novel or…a scribble.  Done by those marvelous smelling markers.

Before tonight is over: my fridge will not be bare.

 -28-

Also published on Medium.