INSPIRED — ART BY VIV

The Getty Tulips

This is the painting that started it all. It was mid March and we went to the Getty Center to walk around the garden and to look at our favorite Van Gogh painting ( Irises ) that is on exhibition there. That day was particularly beautiful, all the spring flowers had just bloomed and the garden was stunning. We spent about an hour walking around the grounds. Sitting on various benches, smelling the tulips and Viv also tried to touch every bee she could find. When we got home later that evening Viv asked to paint. We were not using canvases yet so I gave her a sheet of white painting paper and filled her pallet with the colors of her choice. She painted this rather quick, set down her brush and walked away. I didn’t think too much about this painting but thought it looked like a tulip, so I hung it on the fridge and there it hung for weeks before it hit me that it WAS a tulip. Every time I walked by the fridge I would say there is her “lone tulip”. Then while mindlessly scrolling through my camera roll I was looking at videos and pictures of our day at the Getty. I saw in a bunch of different videos where Viv was admiring the tulips and various other flowers. I though it might just be a fluke, but maybe it wasn’t? It was then that I started to really pay attention to what she was painting and it gives me chills to know that indeed she is painting things in her world. Not everything she paints is inspired but there are some that are undeniably inspired by what she has seen and it’s incredible to get to know her more through her art.

Good Morning Rose

Every morning before Vivienne goes into her school she plays in the trees that shade the front entrance. I purposely leave early so she gets at least ten minutes to climb the low limbs and run around before the bell rings. On one side of this little woodsy area is a small patch of rose bushes, probably planted by some kids years prior. These bushes are not tended to very much, as the roses are very tall and it’s a tad overgrown, but nonetheless it adds a bit of beauty to the front of the school. It was spring and the buds were starting to form and Vivienne, of course, noticed the beautiful yellow blooms that were coming. Everyday she would point to the roses and I would gently bend the stems down so she could smell the roses. This went on for weeks and weeks. Climbing trees and smelling roses first thing in the morning sounds like a pretty great way to start any day. I snapped this picture of her at 7:56am on May 19th. That afternoon after picking her up from school we came home and she immediately asked to paint. We went to the paint closet and she picked out her colors, I set down her canvas, and then she finished this at 1:15pm. She got up from her painting and went about her afternoon. I take pictures of all her paintings right after she’s finished, and I noticed that the yellow flower was directly in the middle of the canvas, very much like the photo I had taken of her earlier in the day. I had sent the picture of her smelling the yellow rose to her Mimi’s and Dad that morning and then I followed it up with the picture of her painting that afternoon. We all agreed she was painting the rose garden. The pink, I believe, represents her. Viv’s favorite color is pink and I believe the pink streaks throughout represent her spirit.

The Universe

It was the morning of July 12th 2022, and like the rest of the world, we were “ooohhhing & ahhhhinng” over all the photos NASA had just released from the James Webb Space Telescope. We played with slime earlier that morning and this specific kit came with packets of glitter. Note to any parent…NEVER give a toddler glitter. EVER. Viv really wanted to add glitter to her slime, but I pretended to add it and then I quickly put it back in the box. Later in the afternoon around 1pm Viv asked to paint again. I got out her colors of choice and she painted. She then brought me the slime kit box. I thought, oh she just wants to play with slime again, which is a HUGE win cause we legit spent months in OT therapy trying to get her to touch the stuff, and other items out of her textural comfort zone. Anywho, I opened the kit and she immediately grabbed two glitter packets, one gold and one silver, and took them over to her painting. I thought to myself no way, but I was also curious to see what she wanted to do with the glitter. I cut corners off of each packet and handed them to her. She shook them like crazy until she had these cool blobs of glitter, then handed the packets back to me, and then handed me the canvas to show that she was “All Done”. I was in awe, she painted the cosmos.

The Birthday Bouquet

I was given a beautiful little bouquet of flowers on my birthday and I put them in a glass vase and set them on the front window sill. Vivienne loves flowers so it was no shock to us to find that she loved this particular vase. We watched her for a week move the flowers from the window sill to the table, back and forth. I’m still surprised her little might mitts of strength could carry a vase (not small) filled with water and flowers with such control. Multiple times a day we would find her rearranging them, smelling them, admiring their beauty. A week had now gone by since my birthday,and it was the following Sunday evening….and we had just done bath time. She was all cleaned up and dried off, and then she came up to me and asked to paint. I honestly almost said “no” because I didn’t want her getting paint on herself as we just scrubbed off the paint from earlier in the day. But, I just can’t say no when it comes to her painting. So, we went to the paint closet and she picked out her colors. Pink, purple, green, white and yellow. I laid a canvas down for her and walked away to let her do her thing. When I came back to her she was quietly sitting there admiring her painting. I knew she was done because she has a trademark move of placing her paint brush on the canvas to signal she is finished. I looked at the swirls of color and it immediately hit me, these are the birthday flowers. They are in the same formation, the same alignment left to right as the flowers in the vase were…the yellow, pink and purple paint all in perfect alignment. I was stunned. I looked at her and said are these the birthday flowers, she of course didn’t say anything, but she looked at me and I knew she was saying, “Yes, mama they are.”