CHILDREN´S ART, CREATIVITY AND THOUGHT.

a day in my art class...

Hello,
this is a part of my life I haven´t really gone into with detail yet in Steemit and it is a very important part of my life. I will draw a picture of it though various posts, as one only would not be able to cover it all, or, it may be too long.

This aspect is how I came to get involved in doing art classes for Children.
I started this back in 2002 for the first time by chance when someone asked me if I could take over their art class because she was ill and it was going to take some months to recover.

I had a small class and I really enjoyed it.
I was working as a firefighter at the time and this was a nice extra class I did two evenings a week. I could combine my job, the art class and my artwork perfectly.

I was then asked to give more classes over the summer and one thing let to the other and I found myself each time getting more and more involved in this.

As a child I had a very special education at home, we were survivors. My mother and I lived almost with no money and we created everything ourselves. It was a tough and beautiful upbringing. I went to a normal local school and didn´t like it overall but went along with it.

In school I became an ecology activist for a while. A friend of mine and I made hand painted posters and notices to bring awareness on the waste and trash we were creating as a society, some were about the tearing down of the Amazon, others were about our local ecological disasters. We were between 10 and 13 years old at that time. We also gave talks in classes about these issues. I was a part of Friends of the Earth and I got them to work with my school.

Somehow I then realised a few years on from there, that society was so asleep that I felt my efforts were only a drop in the ocean and I started putting my efforts in a different direction. I became interested in philosophy and psychology. I went deep into this for the first time when I was about 17 years old and this lasted the rest of my life.

As I was growing up I always felt, almost unsaid, that we were here in this life to do something significant for the rest of life, so I guess I tried many doors of what clashed with the idealism I was surrounded by and the real society I mixed with outside this bohemian society I was born into.

I think when the children´s art classes came to me I was at a point of loosing faith in being able to do anything to directly help society though work on self. I didn´t want to be a therapist which seemed the only option in my field of interest.

I always worked on my art all though, ever since ever.

I had always asked myself , “How am I contributing to make this world a better place just by painting alone?” “how can others benefit from this?” “Is this not too selfish?” I had all kinds of answers come to me in reply to this but this still keeps popping up, even today.

So, I discovered, over time working with children though art, that I really believe this is the only way I can contribute to a better future. I love sharing my time with them and we both learn from each other. I offer a space for them to work in that will give them an experience out of the box.

The art classes I give are based on a few ideas that are fundamental for me.

I don´t teach them to paint what they are seeing in reality around them. I stimulate their imagination though conversation and games to create new ideas and find a way to illustrate them. We play with random words or shapes, depending on the proposal and we reach the unknown from there. It´s a way to work with the subconscious.
I help them learn to hear what they didn´t know they knew come from themselves.

We play with scribbles and find shapes we recognise and develop the story from there.

We don´t use an eraser.

If a child starts a painting and tells me it´s a mistake and want´s to trash it or paint over it, I help them take the piece and look at it from different angles and when they engage in the image from a totally different story, they can continue in a totally different direction.

I believe that there are no mistakes, just set ideas.

I try to keep them developing in their own style and language of expression and not ever loose precisely that and evolve in their language, not copy others.

Children can usually choose between more than one project in class, but once they have decided, they can´t switch till they have completed their first decision. This brings responsibility to decision making. It doesn´t matter if it is not perfectly done, it matters to have tried ones best and have a result to see for that to move on to the next.

I could go on and on I guess, but for now you might get an idea of this I love doing so much.

Above all, I´m so inspired by the high vibration of childrens art.

Yesterday they had an exhibition in the main Hospital entrance of Ibiza and here are some images of them, very proud of their work! ;-)

Best Wishes

Romanie