NEW LONDON — The green thumb that serves me well in the vegetable garden immediately turns into 10 very clumsy thumbs when it comes to picking up a paint brush or pencil in any attempt to create a piece of visual art.

The extent of my talent ends at the formula for drawing a cat that I learned in first-grade: A big circle on the bottom for the body, a smaller circle on top for the head, add triangles for the ears, a curve for a tail and straight lines for whiskers. Voila! A cat.

Any artistic attempt beyond that is more than cringe-worthy.

So when Kristin Allen, who teaches painting classes every Monday night and drawing classes every Tuesday night at her studio, the Greenwater Garage + Gallery in New London, said her classes are open to people of all levels of skills I decided to give it a try.

I knew she had her work cut out for her.

So on a recent Monday night, I joined Allen and three other women in the studio while a half-dozen others joined remotely from as far away as Portland, Oregon and Austin (both Texas and Minnesota) for a class on painting folk art.

“Leave your intimidation at the door,” said Allen, with the cadence of a Zen master. “Give yourself a little grace,” she said.

With small palettes holding colorful dabs of gouache — an opaque water-based paint — Allen instructed the class to start the warm-up session by drawing straight lines. Next was making lines while rolling the brush back and forth, and then came delicate leaves and flowers made by pressing down the fat part of the brush and lifting it up at the fine point.

I ended up with squiggles and blobs.

“Failure is 50% of making art,” said Allen, as I lamented my results.

“It’s probably more, probably a greater percentage than 50%, but I like to say 50 because at least it sounds a little bit optimistic,” said Allen, with a laugh.

But creating art isn’t necessarily about what ends up on the paper, she said.

It’s about belonging and being part of a community.

“I believe the process of making art is transformative and that when we gather around the same work table, art-making has the power to build community,” she said. “The most important thing about what I’m doing here is not necessarily getting you to paint but getting you to connect,” she said. “And then you belong to something. We belong to each other.”

Those in the Monday night painting class included newbies and oldies.

Holly Mossberg, of Spicer, just started coming a couple of weeks ago, and Shannah Anderson, the woman from Oregon who found the class on Eventbrite, has attended every class online for an entire year.

Some clearly had painting skills before enrolling, but Amanda Raetzman, of rural Pennock, said she had “zero” ability as a painter when she first started coming to Allen’s classes in 2017.

“I didn’t think I was capable at all,” said Raetzman, who wow’d the class Monday with her folk art painting of flowers in a teacup.

Raetzman had been into knitting but, while being a caretaker to her mother, who died in 2019, Raetzman found it too difficult to concentrate on her textile craft and started painting.

“It was what my heart needed in general,” said Raetzman of the painting classes.

Allen said there’s something powerful about using your hands to make art.

“It’s not as much about what gouache you use, and what paper, and did you do the brush stroke correctly but (rather) it’s part of you doing something with your hands,” she said. “And this is what my grandmother would have told me — if you do something with your hands it will ease your mind. It softens the struggle.”

Naomi Noeldner, an accomplished artist from New London, said Allen’s ability to draw people into making art.

“Kristin is not only an incredible encourager of people of any skill, she’s constantly encouraging people to just start,” Noeldner said.

“You can have no plan of wanting to do art, but spend a little time with her, she’ll help you find what clicks with you and the next thing you know your creativity has been unleashed,” Noeldner said.

“She just starts a spark,” she said. “It might not be this art form, but she’s got so many tricks up her sleeve, she’s an absolute gift to this community.”

Although my attempts at leaves and flowers looked like nothing more than blotches of paint, the draw of belonging to a community of creativity was strong enough that I just might walk through the door again, remembering to leave my intimidation on the other side.

For more information about the weekly painting and drawing classes at the Greenwater Garage + Gallery, go to the website www.greenwatergarage.com or email at kristin@greenwatergarage.com

West Central Tribune reporter Carolyn Lange wrote this story prior to her retirement in early February.