By Caterina, age 11, Cork
Sarjena sat on the art gallery bench as her mum drew sketches of the paintings.
Sometimes Sarjena hated her name and sometimes she loved it. Her parents had chosen it because they were both artists, their paintings scattered across art galleries as far as Australia and Rome and all sorts of amazing art galleries Sarjena had already seen. Like The Louvre and countless others. A week after her parents were married, Sarjena’s Mum got told she was going to have a baby girl. Her parents chose the name ‘Sarjena’ because it meant ‘creativity’ and they absolutely loved it. But tragedy struck when Sarjena was six years old. Her parents had been horribly arguing about bills and taxes and they eventually split up.
Sarjena looked up at the museum ceiling and sighed, cupping her head in her hands, thinking all kinds of things, mostly why her parents split up. Then one painting caught her eye, a bright colourful painting in the corner of the art gallery, with lines and squiggles, dots and colours. Sarjena got up and walked to the painting. ‘Diana Copperwhite, Shapeshifter’ she read, tracing her finger against the glass cover of the museum label. Sarjena chose to examine the painting. She stared at it so hard, practically every little detail had been etched into her mind.
Sarjena then realised that the painting, for her, symbolised life, feelings as well. The blue splatter was sadness, the green one envy, or maybe loneliness, she would never know, but for now she imagined, the rainbow near the top happiness, the white splatter peace and the orange scribble anger. A bit like her life. She felt jealous of other families that were still together. She felt sad when she thought about not being able to wake up on weekends and run into her parents’ room to bounce on their bed and snuggle in with them and tell fairy tales. She felt happy when she thought she would never hear the sound of shrill voices and shouting at midnight. Suddenly she was so engrossed in the painting that she seemed to be in a world of colour, blue skies with white doves soaring through, grass as green as emeralds, a rainbow above her, colourful and bright.
Her imagination came to a halt when she heard her mum calling “Sarjena, hurry on please. We have to go!” she said. Then she came up to Sarjena and put her hand on her shoulder “Ah. That painting there. That painting was actually there when your father and I first met. We were…we were both looking at it and I asked your father ‘Isn’t it an amazing painting?’ and well, we just started chatting.” Sarjena looked at her mum and noticed that her eyes were brimming with tears and she sniffed a little before wiping her eyes and smiling brightly at Sarjena “Right,” she exclaimed. Sarjena took one last look at the painting and ran off to join her mother.