Youth Mentors Add Perspective

Youth mentors sometimes add insight and perspective in surprising ways...

Yawn

Michael Gray
Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Art is the design mark of a maturing society. Mentors all have their favourite saying; my senior art teacher was no exception. The assignment was quite clever in its own right really, to draw a captured emotion. I had chosen a yawn. I pondered over several other idea's thou all seemed to fall short in the triumph factor, I prayed, would carry me across the A plus finish line. I need to fulfill the spirit of the assignment but also convey a second irony which would make a secured statement about life's time line.

A coloured ink on a heavy cotton paper was my landscape. I could picture the scene in my minds eye. Firstly the face would have to be a social accepted pin point of common ground either very young or old. I would best go with my own gender but some how the duo of drafts leaned towards a female soul so she came into being. I rolled many faces of people gathered in my work pad from the arcade through my drafts.

Her image crafted well, I surprised myself. The appeal of her face deep in a sorrowful expanding movement. I was never going to be a great master however I was satisfied with my transmission of realism as the books put it.

Consequence they say is a verb. In my hurry to finish the last touches of ink against the white cotton paper the bottle was spilled. No speed of hand could catch up the solid mass of fluid flowing across the drawing. I remember the tragic howl of disappointment that rose from my throat. The image was ruined.

Mother glanced over shoulder words of comfort said were not listen to. The failure was complete as no more time could reconstruct my art work. I remember sullen in heart bitter at myself leaving the work to dry, stains and all.

Morning brought no delight for I would be handing in something far from my minds eye. Mum said she would try to correct the error. Behind negatives are positives waiting to be found she stated. Another of those mentoring statements hollow unless the student can understand them fully.

I spied the yawn first from a distance then taking it all in slowly walking across the kitchen centre. The art work was transformed where the stain runs had been, were now the cliff face of a rocky shore line, with a face hidden centre point yawning into the forceful surrounding sea, trees whipping backwards atop the outcrop. She had more than transformed the spillage she had given the emotion the irony it needed.

I thanked her but was aghast that now it was not my work but I needed the best mark I could manage. I left the drawing under wraps until the last possible moment. Then it happen with out guilt I told the story of the drawing of how the brilliance of the design came not from myself but from a far superior artist. Someone with depth of experience to support a different set of eyes someone who could see past the now to the future and who had the ability to trust herself that she could produce and complete.

No matter the mark I would like to offer this image for through this work I discovered life in all it irony. See beyond the present problems to a brighter future.


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