Creating without fear: Gonzalo and the key to the museum

Gonzalo lives in El Morche, in Torrox. When he visits his grandmother’s village and his mother’s family, he puts on his old clothes and spends hours in the studio.

He calls it “the museum”.

I like that name. In his museum you can touch, try things, mix colours and keep painting. There are open paint pots, brushes, pictures and stains from other days. Peluso, our painter cat, has his own place among it all.

Gonzalo walks in and finds something to do. I watch him and often feel that he is the one teaching me.

Doing something simply because you enjoy it

I watch him paint on the floor, approach a canvas, discover a colour. He is absorbed in what he is doing. I so often think about how something will turn out before I begin. His way of creating brings a question back to me:

When did I start asking so much of the things I love?

Gonzalo has played my piano since he was a year old. Whenever he comes into my home, he goes over and plays. I listen, and it sounds good to me. There is something moving about his willingness: the piano is there, and he wants to make it sound.

I play, too, when I sit at the piano. I start with something familiar, but experiment, change things and make it my own. Sometimes I find it hard to step beyond what is established, to stop following the path I already know. But when I allow myself to do it, something unexpected appears. That is where the magic is.

We need to recover the pleasure of doing things for enjoyment. Make room for a time with no outcome to chase, no comparison and no judgement. A time to enjoy ourselves without having to justify it.

Rules are made. Instinct is born.

Learning gives us tools. I want to keep learning while holding on to the impulse to try. To approach something with the curiosity of someone who does not yet know what they will find.

The fear of getting it wrong

Over the years we collect opinions about ourselves. That we draw badly. That we have no musical ear. That we look ridiculous dancing. Sometimes one comment is enough to make us abandon something we enjoyed.

Later, we repeat those words ourselves, even when nobody is watching.

We can end up far from things that made us feel good. Perhaps we want to return, but feel we should first know more, have more time or be certain that the effort will produce something worthwhile.

Watching Gonzalo in the studio reminds me that wanting to begin can be enough. The rest can be discovered along the way.

Can everyone paint? Everyone can approach some colours and explore what happens. Each person can then decide how much they want to learn and how far they wish to go. That first encounter already has value.

So does singing at home, tending a plant, preparing a meal with care or fixing something by hand. There are many ways to recognise what moves us.

When we stop watching the clock

There are moments in the studio when I stop counting the hours.

My hands are busy. One colour leads me to another. Something changes on the surface and I remain there, attentive. My mind settles, and I feel that what I carry inside has found a way out.

Sometimes I imagine a river of colour flowing from the heart into the work.

While the mind rests, the soul smiles.

That is my way of describing it. For a while, I am content where I am. I have enough. I need nothing else to happen.

And the experience stays with me afterwards. It influences what I consider important, how I use my time and what I want. When I find something that comes from within, some demands that once felt enormous begin to take up less space.

Creation as a doorway to the soul

For me, creating has a spiritual dimension.

I think of the Creator as the one who gave us the ability to create and a unique, unrepeatable gift that we can discover and cultivate. Each person can give that connection a name that feels close to them. I find it when I am present in what I am doing and recognise something of myself in it.

Then I can let my social persona rest: the one who knows how to present himself, how to respond and what image to project. I can listen more closely to what I feel.

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

They make me wonder where I am placing mine.

Perhaps part of that treasure is still close to what we loved doing as children. The things we returned to spontaneously, without expecting recognition. Remembering them can help us understand what we miss and what we want to recover.

Let everyone call it what they will. But whoever finds the key and opens that door never closes it again.

That is how I experience it. Recognising that peace changes my perspective. I know there is a place I can return to, and I want to make room for it in my life.

A magical moment of mischief

Gonzalo has even painted over his uncle’s pictures in a magical moment of mischief.

The story is now part of our family history. I look at the photographs and smile: there he is in front of the pictures, colours within reach, the studio transformed into his museum.

It reminds me that creating also needs room for the unexpected. Some days you arrive with a clear idea and something else happens. A gesture, a mixture or a child’s intervention makes you look again.

Spending time with Gonzalo gives me that opportunity. Being close to his enjoyment helps me recognise when I am placing too many conditions on my own.

A painting to remember forever

For his fifth birthday, we, The Rodríguez, gave him his painting in a frame. We had seen the purity of what he had created and the truth in his brushstrokes. We wanted him to keep it and, as the years passed, remember the child who enjoyed painting it.

I hope that painting always reminds him that he already had the key within him.

Returning to what moves us

Perhaps, while reading, you have remembered something you have not done for a long time.

An activity you gave up. An instrument you hardly touch. The wish to write, cook a recipe or dance through an entire song. Something small that keeps waiting until you have finished everything else.

You can make room for it. Approach it without deciding in advance what should come of it. Give yourself time to remember how it feels.

That is the masterclass Gonzalo gives us. Let us learn from children: from their enjoyment, curiosity and freedom to experiment. Let us rediscover the pleasure of sharing it, too. Together or alone, creating, inventing, imagining. Enjoying every hundredth of a second.

We will remain children as long as we keep our sense of wonder, our dreams and our imagination.

And that little freedom from embarrassment that lets us act the fool, imitate, and laugh until our stomachs hurt. Tickles, drawings, a ball, a doll, marbles. Dancing, getting wet in the rain, splashing in puddles.

Everyone will have their own games and memories. I want to keep making room for mine. And I want to return to the museum with Gonzalo: create, stop for lunch and want to come back in the afternoon.

Splashing in puddles, eh, Gonzalo? Look at what grown-ups are missing!

I hope you never forget the child who painted those pictures. May we keep living, playing, painting until hunger calls, dreaming in our sleep and waking up grateful to be here, to be ourselves and to love… and to want to embrace life with all our hearts!

Tito Yoyo (Grego Rodríguez)