Melissa's Painting

Graham, a mate from church and occasional card playing buddy, with whom I had a really good talk last night after we'd kicked out the musos and everyone else had gone to bed at the church camp where we've just spent the weekend; holding a painting I finished while I was there and subsequently gave to Melissa, one of the speakers at the camp who was fantastic. She has a gift of prophecy but delivers her messages from God in a low-key, friendly and totally engaging way. Her emphasis is on dispelling the misconception that God is angry with us and just waiting to pounce, instead, giving story after story from her personal experience and scripture that he is kind and loving and wants us to have good things (not necessarily material things). She was great and I was very encouraged by her and the things she said, as was everyone else at the camp. So I decided to give her this painting, which has on it, amongst many symbols and patterns and colours and shapes, several of the fruits of the Spirit, ie. Peace, Mercy, Forgiveness, Joy, Love and Kindness. Astute reders will observe that it is quite similar to an earlier painting I did for Tina just before we went away. Lots of people commented on it and said how much they liked it so I suspect I'll be doing more in a similar style.
One interesting difference was in the reaction of the girls who saw it to the boys. I was working on it in the main hall during the free time at camp so it attracted a bit of attention. Typical girl's comment (all ages of females) "Gee I really like that etc"
Typical boy's comment (mostly young boys) "What's that?/What are you making?/What are you doing?"
Clearly a different perspective on art appreciation between the sexes!!!