Martin brought home gifts for the girls yesterday from a bookstore. Elspeth's was a big book of Chagall, whom she's shown an affinity for. The book wouldn't have been my first choice for a four-year old, especially since the cover,
To Russia, Asses, and Others, depicts a woman painted in a cubist style with her head floating away into a black and red sky. Elspeth took it in stride, and Martin left her in bed last night "explaining the paintings to Pink Bear:"
See, that woman is tossing her head in the air, Elspeth was saying as he walked away. It just goes to show you that children hold diverse worlds of wild and crazy things--they're not disturbed by the things that make us squeamish, and the soil of their imaginations are rich enough to produce sunflowers and wolves and teapots and monsters with six heads. No young child I know has ever showed any horror when Grandma is eaten by the wolf or when the woodcutter arrives and cuts the wolf's head clear off. . .
Anyhow, this morning, Elspeth was at her Drawing Table coloring like crazy.
"You'd better get dressed, honey," I said--she was almost late for preschool.
"I can't. I'm making an abstract right now."
So, at the price of timeliness, we let her finish.
Here's her work, rather influenced by Chagall, I think, though there are no discernible heads floating away. Maybe that's coming later.
