A long time ago a little girl with chubby fingers sat all day in her room with her magic markers, paints and paper. Her teacher asked her to paint the sky as a homework assignment. She did, an uninspired blue sky with white clouds. The little girl’s mother, an artist, looked at her work. She asked her daughter what colors are present in the sky at sunset.

Then her mother took a magic wand (paintbrush) and blended pinks, oranges, ambers, yellows, purples until the little girl’s sky became alive and almost flew off the paper. The little girl was amazed, then angry; she was, after all, a sullen child and a competitive one. She would never go near art again, she decided, because she would never be as good as her mother.

Decades later, the little girl returned to art, determined to learn everything she could. Her mother remained her muse, even though she had died before her daughter’s art career had really blossomed. Her mother’s sky? That’s a memory that is etched in paint. Paint that can never fade.