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“don’t paint over their lollipop trees.”

Been feeling a bit burned out lately, too many weeks of running around doing stuff and not enough down time, I suspect (hence the lack of posts and lack of Ant-Boy).

Anyway, while taking a break I ran across this article over at CSM. I've felt that frustration as well when I was younger. Back in a high school painting class I took; I was working on painting a lighthouse on an icy shore. The teacher came over and said my waves were wrong, took the brush from my hand and painted the waves the way she thought they should be. After all these years¹, I still feel somewhat annoyed/bitter that she did that. Ah well, not much I can do about it.

Our assignment was to paint watercolor landscapes. I painted trees with round tops, modeled after the pruned trees I saw as I walked to school each morning. I liked my painting; my teacher did not. She said my trees looked like lollipop trees; that they didn't look like real trees, although they looked like the trees I knew.

Mrs. E picked up a paintbrush and painted over my trees to make them look the way she thought trees should look.

For the rest of my school years, I never voluntarily took an art class.

Anyway to Mrs. Kennar I say, though I'm not a teacher and I did continue taking art classes² in high school and into college; I'll never paint over your lollipop trees.

¹ While I've been told that I look much older than my actual age (28); I've been through enough other experiences that thinking high school feels like I'm trudging through ancient history.
² Though perhaps not surprisingly, I haven't done any painting since I took that class.

Tags: annoyed, article, coffee, con, history, IM, pain, park, quote, tea, water, work, working