In this vein, below a watercolor by Hopper from a few days ago. Oh, to paint like a child again! (His watercolors remind me a lot of Kandinsky.) Btw, the double curved red shape in the upper right corner is a bridge, the blue shape in the bottom right corner is a train...
I recently made a 9-minute-video of Hopper painting 1 watercolor, from start to finish. Watching it later, it was absolutely STRIKING how much unhindered, encouraged art-making does for a child...you can literally WATCH while his self-confidence grows with every brushstroke, every decision. You can see in his concentration his own consciousness that every flick of his wrist has consequences for the picture. You see the delight he takes in the artwork that is uniquely his OWN.
I see a toddler's frustrations with hearing "no" or "be careful" or "not now, later" every day. As normal as a toddler's frequent sense of powerlessness is, ART is where he can have total control and total power, in the very best sense.
I just watched part of a documentary, "I Remember Better When I Paint". It is about programs that help patients with Alzheimer's through involving them with art, be it making art, or looking at & talking about art at the Louvre and other high art institutions. One professional said something that made SO much sense to me: Art has nothing to do with short term memory, so when people with Alzheimer's talk about a piece of art, they get involved in a different way than their everyday life enables them to. Their whole person, with all their stored long-term memories, that whole person that usually seems in retreat, emerges.
Isn't this the best thing about good art, about any kind of culture? That it reflects us as humans, that we can reflect back on it, that it binds us together across all kinds of borders? I think art is especially important for the very young and the very old...
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Everything you are saying about children empowering themselves through making art, I have found to be true, Halona. When teaching in Saigon, at first the children were afraid to speak, so I provided them with paint and brushes and asked them to do a painting of what they felt about what we were studying. In one case, it was volcanoes, in another it was the food pyramid. Some thought they "couldn't draw/paint". I told them they could, that everyone can. The results were that it opened them up to everything. While sitting and doing their paintings, one of the most extroverted would start them reciting the lines from the fable, Jack and the Beanstalk, which I had been teaching them - it's great for second language learners because there is a lot of repetition in it - all the sudden, as they were painting, they began to repeat in unison the lines to the fable. It was an incredible moment of joy for me and a huge discovery about teaching through the use of art/painting, which relaxes one and releases inhibitions while empowering the individual.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, Mitzi. I love your observation that painting and drawing release inhibitions. This is very true when children's art-making is encouraged, and when NOTHING within the art is criticized or admonished or held up to any standard of sorts. This total, unconditional encouragement toward individual expression via art is the key to releasing, relaxing, and opening up the mind, as you say. It's also the point where so many ill-informed teachers / parents / grown-ups go wrong..."that doesn't look like a tree", "the sky is supposed to be blue"...we've all heard the stories of kids who were proud of what they made, only to be "set straight" by some ignorant grown-up, and never to pick up a paintbrush again...
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