A child’s painting is made without restraint:
it’s vivid and vibrant, it’s bold and bright.
A child’s canvas holds a pallet of paint:
a bucket of brilliance and sheer delight.
She paints a garden under sunny skies;
dabbles the brush over petal and stem.
She gently strokes the wings of butterflies;
and so imagines she is one of them.
She paints her world on a borderless page;
with abundance her landscapes grow and stretch;
colours explode, shapes expand; there’s no cage
that can contain the wonders of her sketch.
. In a child’s garden there’s room for belief,
. a world of wonders for adult relief.

© Tim Grace, 5 January 2012

To the reader: We out-teach the artistic instinct in children and then hanker for its return throughout our adult years. A child’s interpretation of the world is a fairly spontaneous imitation of experience; translated using naive means. The young artist (untrained in tricks and tools of the perceptive trade) makes-do. Without mastery, a child is free of restrictions; free to draw upon raw imagination. This medium has no separation; this medium is the closest we get to living art.

To the poet: The irony of this sonnet is its tight control over the thematic centrepiece – naive liberty. It’s an adult’s carefully scripted celebration of a child’s artistic freedom. Unfortunately, there’s a trade-off that comes with age and mastery: skill becomes an interpretative filter. The more skilled I become the more capable I am of manipulating my experiences; consequently, inspiration is overwhelmed by technique. The redeeming feature is freshness … did inspiration survive the productive ordeal?

Pallet of Paint – Picture Source: http://youtu.be/RfOOAUiKFew