Scribbles and Hubble and Goldfish, Oh My!

This is a series of paintings I did with Ivy over the course of the last few days. I painted the circles, and she did the rest. Somehow, my starting the painting out with circles allowed her to dig in, too. I used to do the same for G, but I would paint a stick figure or a face that he would then elaborate. We used Crayola Color Wonder Fingerpaints. A wonderful greasy, squooshy clean fun time activity which G won't touch because it's a yucky greasy squooshy mess. He likes water colors the best, which Ivy tends to eat.

She likes to sit on my lap while I am on the computer, and paint. She has even learned a new word and will yell it loudly and repeatedly if I do not listen quickly enough. "Paint. Paint! PAINT! PAINTPAINTPAINT!"

As she painted picture after picture, I started to see something interesting.

This is what I thought of.

I love those Hubble photographs. They fire my imagination, and they are so goshdern beautiful.
It doesn't hurt my imaginitive process that I am writing a Science Fiction novel about a colony who lands on the only other Earth-like planet that has ever been discovered by man... and they do it on the sly, to keep other dangblasted Earthlings from getting in on the booty.

It gratifies my soul that my little artbabies enjoy painting and looking at art. Sometimes G will sit on my lap and watch me page through etsy (we search for key words like monsters) and he has definite likes and dilikes.. I've taken them to museums and art festivals. Once before Ivy was born, I took G to a gallery and he turned up his nose at everything there. He just didn't like it. I tried to make the artist (who was there) feel better saying he was picky, but I think he ignored the whole thing, thinking what does a kid know about art. I don't think he realized that G actually does have a distinct aesthetic sense, and it wasn't ALL art he didn't like, it was just this guy's. D'oh!

Maybe that guy should spend some more time looking at kids' art, because they come up with some amazing things, without the art education or even an elementary education. Maybe humans are innately artistic, or creative, or visually oriented. Maybe we all have the potential to be artists, and it only depends upon our parents and lives to nurture that potential.

By coincidence, the good people at Inspire Me Thursday picked this weeks inspiration to be "Bringing Child's Art to Life." It's like the inspiration was hand picked for me.

I had already been thinking about the outerspace image, but then I started wondering how else I might be able to bring the paintings to life. It's not an easy challenge, I don't think, especially since my kids are so little, and their art is non-representational. I love it, but they haven't moved into people and kitties and houses yet.

I started to think about what Ivy might be thinking/seeing while she paints, if it's not just the sensual pleasure of squishing in the paint and the existential pleasure of making a mark that stays behind. (Do one year olds experience existential pleasure?)

This is what I came up with. Something that echoes the chaotic feel, the circles, the colors, the sensual pleasure (this time with touch and taste, along with sight.)


So that's how I staged my Child's art. I did it on purpose, even if it just looks like my kid's snack. Actually, I thought about leaving all the cheerios and goldfish on the floor, where they actually were, but I wanted a white background, not a brown wood one.

What IS it with Cheerios and the floor? Maybe the kids really are trying to make art when they throw them on the floor. A kind of breakfast cereal Pollock thing?