Do you like apples ...?

When the grandkids are over, we often paint together. London, then about 5, helped me underpaint this apple scene. He soon tired of painting and began inspecting my fly tying station. He was intrigued with the many different "bugs" and was impressed that I knew each of their names!

The next thing I knew, he was playing in the room and tripped ... landing with both hands on the nearly finished painting! The painting flew off the easil and on to my palette of paints. He screamed ... I screamed ... and paint "stuff" flew everywhere! He ran out of the room crying, "I wooined da painting, I wooined da painting". It took awhile to clean things up and to console poor London. I tried to convince him that we could fix the painting, but he wasn't buying any of that.

Soon, however, we made our way downstairs to my studio and we began tranforming his little hand prints into seed pods, and the long, dark line through the painting (my brush mark when the board flew off the easil) into long grass blades. One of the center apples was also smeared a bit, so we repainted it to be "different" and "unique" from the other apples ... I told him that it would represent him! Needless-to-say, he was relieved and impressed that we truly could "fix" the mess.

I explained to him that because of the Savior, every circumstance in our lives can be set straight. As Isaiah explains, "He can make light out of darkness; He can make straight crooked paths". Not every brush stroke will be perfect, some may even be mistakes, but in the end our life's painting can be beautiful with the Savior's help.

London signed one corner of the painting and I signed the other ... our first work of art together! He now has the original ... I repainted this one for my own use to remind me of this wonderful and sacred experience. (Acrylic on hardboard 36"x 12") (August 2006)