LOVE THE BUTTERFLY
Children's Favorite Art Subject
Dr Abe V Rotor
Eight kids and an elementary teacher among them came over
at home one Saturday morning.
So with early butterflies fluttering among flowers in the garden,
kissing the first rays of the sun.
What shall we draw? I asked, obvious of the beautiful subject around
- the remarkable butterfly;
Hurrah! they chorused, anticipating the start of the session
- to capture the butterfly on paper.
And they did in different versions, based on a pattern of the Monarch,
the universal butterfly.
What is it in the mind of a child what a butterfly really is
- more so, why a butterfly in the first place?
Does she have a mind of her own, intelligence for that matter,
if you will, just like humans perhaps?
I can only surmise that the butterfly,
as a member of the ecological system,
gains from such interrelationship,
more than being independent, unattached;
more than her beauty, or all the flowers in the garden.
The child artist digs deeper about her subject:
where did she come from, where is her home.
Does she have children? What do they look like?
They were once caterpillars, I answered.
What a dichotomy, and yet ugliness gave way to beauty,
clumsiness to being dainty and pure.
So I told them the story of Paulus' Hope for the Flowers,
about two butterflies that lived in a troubled world,
and found happiness at the end.
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This is our art gallery at home in San Vicente, Ilocos Sur: a floor-to-wall-to-ceiling mural complex of Nature in different scenes. Kids from the neighborhood, pupils passing by after class, come for a visit, or sit for hour or two to learn something about art. First I ask them. Do you love the butterfly? ~
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