A Portrait of the Storyteller as a Young Child

When Eldest Daughter was four years old, we visited an artist friend of mine who had set up a table where the children could paint while we moms talked.

E.D. sat down at the table, selected a brush and some bright pink paint, and painted a girl.  As she painted, she talked about what the girl was doing, and changed colors to paint a hill and grass, and then the sky and sun, and the girl's house.  When the girl in the picture started picking flowers, E.D. not only painted in the flowers, she painted the girl kneeling to pick them.  Next, the girl took her flowers home, so she was painted traveling across the picture to the house.  As the girl entered, its interior was painted too.  E.D. spent at least half an hour telling everything the girl did and every place she went, and by the time the story was done, the paper was a muddy mess.

It was fascinating.