Child’s Play
I had the good fortune to be able to see a new exhibit when I taught at the Chaffee Art Center over the weekend. It wasn’t quite your typical show- it was a kid’s exhibit featuring art from preschoolers to seniors in high school from the Rutland, VT region. It was an excellent show, and on day two of my seminar, I decided to take my students on a tour of the galleries so we could talk art. After all, art is not created in a vacuum, the inspiration is interactive, the process is interactive, and the results are definitely interactive.
Art created by children is so wonderful. Not simply because someone is encouraging an outlet for their creativity, which almost seems trite. Kids are naturally creative, whether digging in the dirt or painting with their fingers. I respond to the uninhibited energy and honest emotions that a child will put into their work, unashamed, and without hidden motives. It’s very naked, in a way.
The bold colors and strong lines, the flagrant disregard for perfection, the honesty of subject matter. Perhaps the older we get, the more we tuck these things neatly away on a shelf, hoping that we’ve begun to mature and make sense of things, to find our “niche”. Do we sacrifice something in this process? Do we inhibit honesty, making trades for sellable art, or pieces that are approved of by peers or patrons?
Kids don’t even think along any of these lines, and the results can be astoundingly profound. A child will want to make a cat, and in few minutes, there is a cat, conveying the very essence of the typical cat personality- frisky, mischievous, and very feline, indeed. It doesn’t seem to matter that “real” cats aren’t purple, don’t actually grin in a human-like manner, and aren’t the size of a kitchen table. To them, this is a real cat, and it very much conveys “catness”.
I wish I could so easily tackle my subject matter by reducing it to a concentrated essence, leaving in only the vital energy that it manifests to me. Instead, I often suffer from analysis paralysis, and cause myself to suffer from the painter’s equivalent of writer’s block. My muse has left me, because I have berated it from existence. My inhibitions have stifled my own flame of creativity and inspiration. I have no one to blame but me.
I became inspired with this show, taking notes and coming up with interesting ideas. We often stick with our tried-and-true methods of doing things, and would generally not try something out of the norm unless forced to. I had to do a great many unusual assignments in college, but it was out of those unique experiences that I matured the most, having no other choice but to go beyond my comfort zone and think outside of the box.
I challenge you to do the same. I will be posting a new assignment each month, and it’s not important if you don’t get it done on the exact due date. It’s important to think about attempting them, because I guarantee you will grow and the resulting conversations will add flavor to you as an artist.
April 30th, 2007 at 7:51 am
I like your term “analysis paralysis”! Also your evaluation of children’s art. “Catness” is an interesting concept that could be applied to anything, the idea of capturing the essence of a thing without worrying about the structure. Or having no structure on purpose. Perhaps structure isn’t the right word, but I hope you know what I mean. The form your work takes might not be the form of an actual cat, or whatever it is you are trying to capture the essense of. All food for thought today!
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:49 pm
You always have such great insight Judy! Somtimes I wish I could eliminate some of the structure of my life
Distill it down to a concentrated essence.. but that could get scary…