Pirate Art Happening.

A was painting outside. He likes the spray bottles filled with red and blue paint (I suspect for the spraying activity more than for the application of paint). He had painted two canvasses and was ready to start on a third. By this time he had several paint brushes and the spray bottles. It was a red day, mostly because A likes red (with a little bit of yellow thrown in).

He used a small brush and drew an orange-red triangluar shape with a few other triangular shapes on top. "I made a pirate boat," he said.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I can see the sails, and I think I see a bit where the boat is reflecting in the water."

A drew a line along the top in red. "This is the mast," he said. Then he grabbed a larger brush and began to paint in a very thick line. "I'm making the mast," he said, adding more and more paint to make a very thick, red line. "Why did their mast break?" he asked (a reference to "How I Became a Pirate" -- a story where a modern boy joins some 1800s pirates and a lightning struck mast causes them to return to the boy's house).

"Did you want to use the spray bottles?" I asked, thinking that if he used the blue bottle he could have an ocean. Instead he grabbed the red. "I'm erasing the mast," he said, spraying a wash of red paint over the entire canvass (a referece to using a MacPaint spray can to paint over shapes with their filled-in color). "Why did they have to turn back?" I tried to hand him a blue spray bottle, and followed M's advice that I just step back and let A do what he wanted.

A finished painting. I turned on the garden hose and announced that it was time to spray off all the paint (especially the red paint caked onto A's armpit -- probably where he stuffed the paint brush under his arm). There was about ten minutes of spray play.

And then A got a hold of the garden hose.

He advanced on the canvas, where the thick masted pirate ship was drying. "Why did the lightning make the mast crack?" he asked, and then started to spray the painting.

"A-- oh, never mind." I retreated to the kitchen for some chocolate. There were some more comments about storms as the water washed away the red wash previously sprayed on. The water blasted away layer after layer of paint, revealing the thick mast, then the mast itself dissolved. "Why did the mast break?"

By this time I was inside watching through the windows as chocolate and mint helped assage my artistic sensiblities. "Hey honey," I said to M, "Our son is busily channeling his inner ocean storm and washing off the painting of the pirate ship."

"Those conceptual artists," he said.

I looked out of the window again. "Now he's tearing up the canvass and. . . he's burying it." A by this time had a shovel in his hands.

"It's an art happening. It's not about the end product, it's all about the process. Are you videoing this?"

"Mmmm. No." I said and went outside to photograph the buring processes (and clean up bits of mushy paper clinging to the to the fence).

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"But I don't like to take a bath," A said.

"Oohh," I said one of those inscrutible father smiles. "Well, when you chose to paint yourself, you also chose for me to give you a bath to take off the paint."