The Garden of Eden

Estephanie, when she was almost 8yrs old drew a picture of me using the art kit I sent her and wrote 'Te kiero Chelaka' (I love you Chelaka). To date, I treasured this beautiful drawing of her sponsor, thus framed and kept it on my bookshelf.

This reminds what Picasso (Spanish painter), one of the greatest artists of the 20th century once said... “It took me four years to paint like Raphael (Italian painter), but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

So, I studied the drawing carefully, which told me a story of her imagination with no boundaries. To her, I'm an Angel with somewhat not seen facial look in people on the ground who lives in a place up above the tree line, called 'Heaven' close to the sun and cloud surrounded by dawn flowering and butterflies carrying and spreading her love. The world around him is happy and delightful.

Her random thought process then started to narrow down defining each object by real sense of coloring – the green tree top with brown trunk, the orange flare around the sun, the Garden of Eden! If you were to imagine the longest word in the English alphabet being 'Smiles' (S-mile-s), her pictorial language transcends happiness miles afar.

At the end of an exhausting attempt to draw this picture reveals how fast her metabolic energy burned during production of such a masterpiece – she must have been relieved to see it over and done with! This greatest insight of the childhood world portrayed by Estephanie will remain in my heart forever.

(photos added to my SCS blog)

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