Why bash Bush?

When I first saw this monstrosity on facebook my knee jerk reaction was, terrible President, terrible artist.  I proceeded to draw correlations from history.   The comparisons between Hitler and all the famous politicians who were artist wannabes digressed into another mean spirited political argument.

Then Robert Naugle asked a simple question:

Who is my favorite artist?

Here’s my response:

That’s like asking me for my favorite color or my favorite note in the scale. I am moved by the diversity of expression. I love how people, great and small, can paint the same sky and that it is never the same, even when it is. I love that prisoners can create needle point from their belly button lint, and alcoholics can drip paint that takes me to worlds distant and unknowable. And the unloved can glob paint into sunflowers or toothpicks into towers of aspiration. And old ladies can conjure pretty flowers on their dining room tables, while Elephants in India draw themselves with their trunks.  And men carve tree trunks into pretty little worlds.  And angst ridden youth can fail so desperately in the expression of nothingness.  They all make me cry in the boldness of their courage, that even Presidents can allow themselves to fail at what they love.