Search this site

Recent site activity
Home‎ > ‎

The World from a child’s perspective


The World from a child’s perspective is depicted in their artwork. The students that have been involved with the Portrait Society show their work with imagination and it is fascinating to see the delightful depictions of their work. Sometimes when looking at a certain picture one might not know which way to turn it, but children will readily explain it for they know well what they were expressing. As an Art Therapist, one knows, that the picture without the words is only half of the journey to understanding the world they are creating.

In the Tulip Portraits, the students were all given the same arrangement of flowers to draw and paint. The work reflects the infinite ways that one image that is the same to everyone can be seen internally from many different perspectives. One child focus’ on the flowers, some the vase, some the shinny marbles in bottom of the vase and some see the back ground as important as the flowers. This display represents fourth grade students that were performing an art curriculum assignment to do a still life. They were given pencils and paints and paper and offered class time to complete the task.

One of the important lessons for the children to learn is that they are individuals. They have a piece of paper that is their space in which they can observe an object and depict it without being wrong. Sometimes children are concerned that someone is “copying them”. I like to point out to them that we cannot copy each other. We are all beginning from different places. Our handwriting is different, our thumb prints are different, and our ears are different. Down to the small details we are different when it comes to who we are on the inside and how we appear on the outside and how we perceive the world around us. It then becomes natural to help them celebrate the differences. Our theme has been to Celebrate Nashville in the same way. Our city is unique and is made up of those of us that live here. It is because of each of us, that Nashville is a great place to live.