To me painting is my down time, I love being able to come home from a long day at school or work and let the creative juices just simply flow without much criticism for how it is turning out. When I was in elementary school I remember my teacher telling us, "In art, you do not have a easer, you do not erase mistakes, you simply change it into something else that works in that mistake." Possibly I took that to much to heart, and she only expected that to be a nice statement for us to we would not change everything did and take 5 tries to get our favourite stroke, but I have always followed that rule. On many of these paintings, especially the "Lake in July" it changed multiple times from the original idea of just mountains, to mountains over a ocean, to mountains over a lake, light mountains, dark mountains, dark lake, sun on the lake, lots of different images were running through my head. As a teacher I hope to do art education as much as possible, and well. Often art is done in schools but it's pretty lame and restricting. I hope to be able to invite the students to develop their imaginations and creativity while also helping them build their confidence in sharing their ideas and creative side. My goal would be to have no student in grade 5, 6, 7 say that they are unartistic and cannot do art work. To me this a obvious flaw in our education and teaching system in that 95% of the students by middle school believe that they are not good at art. This is a great shame and blow to our education that I hope to reserve even just in my classroom.