The Art of Virginia Peacock

Art by Virginia Peacock; click on the picture to see a larger viewLast Friday afternoon I was sitting in the Colville St. Patisserie chatting with one of our university students over a cup of chai and a scoop of chocolate gelato, when Virginia Peacock approached our table (Doesn't she have the greatest name?).

"Wanna buy my art?" she asked, with no other introduction.

I turned to look. The first thing I noticed was the evidence in her face of Downs Syndrome. She had placed a stack of art works on the table, all a bit bent up from the warping effects of watercolor paints. The prices were penned on the back of each picture. Whether large or small, the prices were constant: $5.00 per picture, with the point-zero-zero carefully included in each notation.

It was happy art. There's just no other way to describe it. There were butterflies and birds and trees and turtles and tigers, all in vivid colors with crayon details added. It looked like what my first graders used to produce when I was an elementary teacher, and it evoked warm, peaceful emotions in me.

In that moment a string of thoughts went through my head. First, I thought of the fact that I didn't have much cash left in my pocketbook. Then I thought of the fact that I had just spend five dollars on chai and gelato, and wondered why that would be of higher priority than buying a Virgina Peacock original. Finally, I thought of my Thai brother, Montree, a doctor who gave some little coin to every single beggar we passed on the streets of Bangkok when we visited him the summer I finished college. And I thought of how I had admired a watercolor of orchids done by a street artist in Bangkok, and how he immediately bought it for me. It hangs on my wall to this day, a symbol of beauty and generosity in our home.

And so, I am now the proud owner of a Virginia Peacock original crayon art masterpiece, the one with lurid purple butterflies and a cheery colorful bird perched among trees floating around over green grass. And Virginia has five more dollars in her pocket, as she put it in answer to my query, "to buy more art supplies." Long may she work with her magical, happy colors.

The Thai orchid picture