A while ago one of Stijn’s friends asked him if he wanted to join her to Art Class after school. I was amazed when his friends Mom told me how expensive an hour of Art Class is (and I was already counting out how many pots of paint I could buy for that amount) but alas… Stijn really loves drawing and painting and if he wanted to join his friend that was okay with me. When I told Stijn that he could go to the Art Class with his friend, he responded quite different from what I’d expected though: "But mom, how can you even think I would want to go to Art Class? I AM an artist." Well, I thought, he is right because he really makes beautiful art. Nobody has ever told him how you should or shouldn’t paint so he paints straight from the heart and the results are always quite satisfying. I wasn’t going to make him go to Art Class so I used the money I saved for new paint and brushes. I really love to draw and in fact drawing is the only thing that I’ve learned in school… No, not in Art Class; I didn’t like that too much. In Art Class you couldn’t choose what you wanted to draw and I remember the time when I had to draw a bicycle in great detail. It was so totally uninteresting that it almost made me dislike drawing. What I liked to draw (and still do) are horses. In Art Class we didn’t draw horses so I had to draw horses during all the other lessons. When you would look though my old school work books you would find many, many drawings of horses… and not much else. Rutger doesn’t like drawing or painting much so I don’t force him to do it. What’s more important is that he’s a great art lover. He is the one in our family who is most excited when we visit a museum. He reads many books on famous painters and knows everything about their work. From my school years I remember a field trip to an art museum during which we had to answer many questions to make sure that we would pay attention. What a difference with the way our children experience a visit to the museum. Whether it’s making art or enjoying it, the most important thing in my opinion is to do it with your heart and soul and to truly enjoy it. In art classes you can learn new techniques that’s very useful, but it’s a left brain activity. What’s more important, and more difficult for most of us, is to let you right brain take over and to create straight from the heart without judging what you do. Children do this naturally and I believe that we should cherish their ability to create straight from the heart. Sure it will improve their work when they’ll learn some techniques but there’s plenty of time for that. So Stijn is still painting in his own way. "Mom," he said a while ago "the way Vincent van Gogh painted, it looks a bit like the way I do it." Well, he should now because after all; he IS an artist.