I always thought art was… abstract. But this is pushing it, even as someone who works with previous mentioned, very abstract art all day. Which is a long blown out way of saying I worked at an art gallery. And sometimes my job required me to make up meaningful descriptions for random-ass artwork.

Who knew my master in art history would become a masters in bullshitting.

The artwork I had not only looked like a child drew it, but they actually did. My boss came in with his son, only for the boy to throw a tantrum demanding his art be featured.

What was handed to me was a variation on what I assume we all drew as children, a family portrait. The kid didn’t even have the decency to give them proper bodies, no semicircles with long stick legs.

I was starting to get worried. I thought the kid would do some crayon colours and it would be the mental cloud of a nation or something. But the one by two meter canvas is just filled with semicircle figures, all surrounding the massive little red headed boy who created the piece.

No I could do this. The massive boy in the middle became purposeful. A representation of a child surrounded in his world, at the centre of it. The egocentrism and narcissistic bliss of childhood that so many adults fail to recreate within their own lives.

This is what that piece stood for. The very adult artist’s very intentional back to his roots artwork. All in the pursual of the narcissistic bliss, freedom and respite of childhood.