Please, if you will, observe those children painting. (I took these images at an art class we had here at our open art studio/gallery/school.)
What I love about these pictures the most is that every little person is pursuing his/her own vision, unselfconsciously. And every vision is different!
The little girl in the top image is pursuing representation: buildings, growth, sky, etc.
The little guy in the middle image is all about those stripes. Structure! But, it's personal. He's painting something derived from within.
The little girl in the bottom image is also painting her inner vision, but her painting is soft-edged, with lots of fuzzy roundness. Also, we had these children mixing their own colors. Note what an amazing job this little girl did at mixing all kinds of shades and tints! (The little girl in the top image DID use some secondary colors, though not as many as the other little girl and the little boy did not mix his colors at all, sticking with the primaries.)
So, my point? (Besides posting the most adorable and amazing pictures of these tykes.)
Why do we lose this? Most of us serious adults lack the courage to be ourselves. Life has hurt us! It's safer to blend in (no pun intended)!
And, even when some of us dare to break out of our self-constructed prisons, we're not in the moment, like these little people are. We're not attending to the task at hand, whatever it may be. We are busy looking over our shoulders, making sure nobody is observing us "being weird".
How about you? Despite all the craziness in this world, can you dare to be yourself? Can you risk surrendering to the moment? Do you want to?
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As an artist, I've noticed how children often seem to have a freer sense of color and adults become more careful with their choices.
ReplyDeleteDr. J,
ReplyDeleteVery true. As adults, we have a lot of conditioning about what kinds of colors "go together" instead of relying on our own sensitivity.
And even artists are conditioned to use complimentary colors, etc., to achieve certain effects. Not that I'm knocking knowledge (about color or anything else). That is one of the things that differentiates adults from children. But knowledge/information should be at our service, not the other way around.
Those are great pictures! Only recently have I been able to accept things about myself which put me in groups which...well they're not bad or anything, but they're not "cool" either. Like that I'm a crazy fangirl and it's ok. :)
ReplyDeleteI think the freedom starts when you start to realize that there is rarely one right way to do things and that people are as diverse as you. There is no one best, right group to be a part of. There are just groups.