Listening for Invisible Intentions.

So far this year, watercolor painting has proved to be a rich observational context for approaching questions about the intentionality behind children’s work, the fluidity of these intentions, and and how the process children engage in when painting is both artistic and relational.

Early childhood materials are latent with potential relational energies—they have the power to bring children together by revealing the ideas, creative energies, and habits of young children to one another even as the child who is themselves creating realizes a capacity in themselves theretofore unknown.

By the time I approach the two girls with my journal in hand, they are busy at work. Brushes swirl across small pieces of watercolor paper—their technique is not the formal water-paint-paper-water-paint-paper that I use in my personal practice (and attempted to model for them). The watercolors are serving a different end for these two, and my place is to encounter them where they are.

I attempt to strike up a casual conversation with each of them. My questions to them are met with successive responses of “I don’t know.” I realize that it is my time to be silent, to listen.

“Childhood is full of invisible intentions. The ones that, without listening, would bloom and die without our knowledge.”

“I don’t know—I’m trying to make this lighter,” BK says, her eyes still trained on the paper in front of her. I am unsure as to what she is referring. The bottom of her paper is a bluish purple, punctured at intervals by yellow dots that are almost gold. Adjacent to this, a varicolored chunk of green envelops what appears to be a carefully delineated section of reddish orange.

BK’s work in progress.

“I’m trying to make a sunset,” EB says.

BK quickly adds, “I’m trying to make the water light. This is a cool light color.” 

An intention reveals itself alongside the unfolding of the artwork.

“I’m done with my sunset,” EB declares a few moments later, the final flourish of color beginning to dry on a slightly-pilled sheet of paper.

“Oooh! It looks so colorful!” BK offers words of support.

Moments pass, and the ink on the pages of my journal also dry as the watercolor seeps in. However, the elapse of time shows that, for the children, are far from finished.

BK turns to me with a look on her face that I have, over the past year, learned to associate with a percolating thought. “Did you know,” she begins, “that the LOL girl, she didn’t mix up paints with these two colors.”

“Hmm,” I respond. I am familiar with LOL dolls, although I have not seen the video under question.

BK continues. “Just like I didn’t [mix the paint] to the stars I makeded.”

I ask BK how she knew what the girl did, how she was aware of her technique. 

“She telled me in the video,” 

EB, working adjacent to BK, declares another intention.

“Now I’m gonna try to make the water light.”

“The water light?” BK confirms. 

“Yeah. So it can turn clear.” EB adds. 

The intentions have found one another again. By reprising the thread of what was likely BK’s intention (at least as originally stated) that is, to turn the water light EB has made a bid of sorts to BK by acknowledging BK’s original intention and improvising it in a way that makes it fully her own. Childhood is full of invisible intentions. The ones that, without listening, would bloom and die without our knowledge. 

I am grateful for this opportunity to have listened to and learned from them. I watch as the sun sets in EB’s painting, and finally learn that the yellow amidst the purplish blue on BK’s piece is her rendering of the stars that dot her hoodie.

And soon enough, they are off again.

And so am I.