Meet Your Child's Art Guide: My Vision and Why I Love Teaching Art
Kiddo helping me prepare for a solo exhibition a few years ago
The phrase “teaching art” doesn’t sit well for me. In class we learn the skills, the techniques, the hacks, and the tricks, but it’s so much more than that—it’s the facilitation of creativity, process, play, and connection! There is a foundation beneath the fun art classes that are connected to my values and the choices I make in life.
I choose to home educate for many reasons—the most overriding reason being that I do not want my child to lose their sense of self to an authority that may not have their best interests at heart.
I want them to move through life and within their community feeling connected and empowered, with full trust in themselves, and to think critically without being pressured into compliance and dependence on an outdated, inequitable system. I want them to feel connected to spirit (whatever that may mean to you), or their innate moral compass. I want them to know freedom—true freedom—and not have their mind colonised by an extractive system of consumerism.
These are BIG themes!
Facilitating art and creativity with kids is—to me—an act of gentle rebellion. I believe that one of the pathways to expanding into the fullest expression of human potential here on Earth is through a relationship with nature, to community, to our empathy and compassion, and through art and creativity.
Bringing it back to the everyday, the documented benefits of children engaging in drawing, painting, and crafting are many:
- Sense of achievement
- Growth mindset
- Problem-solving skills
- Connection with emotions
- Self-expression
- Connection to self, and knowing oneself
- Connection to others and something greater than self
- Learning to let go of outcomes (faith / trust in the face of things out of our control)
- Mindfulness
- Stress relief
But perhaps the most important thing that artmaking does is it nurtures IMAGINATION.
Our imagination has been relegated to the world of “make-believe,” when in actual fact, it is the realm of the visionary.
We need visionaries—people connected to something more amazing and greater than themselves. People who can see other ways of being in this world. People who can see solutions when others can’t think their way out of the box.
I know this sounds quite grandiose, but if you also chose to home educate, it must be because you envisioned something better, greater for your children, too.
Because let’s be honest - it is the path less trodden and definitely not the most convenient path to take! Let’s just say, it is the scenic route along a dirt road full of potholes, but also with exquisite views.
This is why I believe a nurturing environment, where kids can get together and make a mess, and try new things, and chat and laugh together, is so much more than just learning to paint a still life. It is the energy behind the artwork that make an artwork great.
Much like life x
