Anyone you meet has the potential to influence how you think or act in a positive way. I’m hoping that with every artist Meilee meets that she gets a cumulative understanding about just how different artists can be and be inspired to grow beyond rainbows and princesses. She does have moments of expression that clearly show great potential, but she falls back too easily into the kind of rudimentary drawings you’d expect from a 6 year old. But because I’ve seen that glimmer of brilliance, I want to make sure that she is set up to discover her own tipping point.

This weekend, we were happy to have our friends Colin and Erica Baugh visit from Los Angeles. Colin is a former colleague and Erica is a painter. She saw some of Meilee’s drawings that I had posted to Instagram and asked if it was possible to purchase two of them. I responded that I’d be happy to give her some reproductions of those particular drawings (and a home-cooked meal) in exchange for an art lesson for Meilee.

As I cooked dinner, Erica began talking to Meilee about how to mix paints. She quizzed Meilee on some basic combinations: How do you get purple? (Red plus blue.) How do you get green? (Blue plus yellow) How do you get orange? (Yellow plus red.)

And so it went for a few minutes. Then, they started mixing colors in order to make a color wheel.

Meilee enjoyed learning about how to create different shades of a given color. “Like pumpkin orange, cold blue, warm blue,” she recalled.

Just before we had to clean up for dinner, Meilee interviewed Erica. My husband recorded the conversation (that’s him chuckling in the background). You will also see in the video below what happened the next morning. Big thanks to Erica for her generosity of time, spirit and paints!

Artist Erica Baugh on Facebook