Child
art is not childish
Kasargod Pundalik Shenoy
Two
famous artists of Switzerland
Both artists while returning enquired if there was any way to stop
the adults from painting. What is it they saw in these children’s painting?
They apparently felt that the flow of children’s movement generates from the
heart and not from the mind. Some of their expressions reflected the style of
unrealistic artists like Dali, which they might not even have dreamt of. Their
paintings cannot be copied by any other child or by adults. For them, it is a
nature’s gift. This was supported by famous philosopher and artist Henri
Bergson. He said that intrusion is the ability of visualising several
incompatible images occupying the same spot in space. Paul Klee repeatedly said
that a good artist must be able to hold the entire plane in a single undivided
focus.
Paul Klee was enormously gifted young painter who was still
looking for the precise form in which his genius would express itself. A super
draftsman, who was famous for the disturbing figure he had drawn and later on
his painting, depicted the beauty of innocent child art. The word Art though so
common, speaks a lot with a simple definition “Keeping the things in order,”
both external and internal, and only if this is followed, can we say that they
are artists, even if they do not know to paint.
Adults are always of the opinion that child art is childish. But
in reality, it is not so. Child’s psychology is different from that of adults
and a child can see and imagine things, what most adults cannot. As the child
grows, he starts losing something which the adults fail to protect and support.
Have you seen paintings of children? As an experiment, someone asked an
unconditioned child to draw “my family”. The child without hesitation started
drawing first the picture of house, on the top of the house his loving father,
on either side his mother and
himself, sister and his loving dog. The whole painting is one and cannot be
separated. The picture is drawn by movement of single stroke. There is no
clinical perfection. There is no division or parts in between. It has an undivided
focus. In a way, the whole picture is created with one centre and they are just
perfect in every way.
Adults stop Painting
Surprisingly, today’s children’s paintings are response to existrantial threat. Their pictures though, formal expressions of a prevocational hurled, at their very life feelings and it remains as deference’s. Still our people are of the opinion that child art is childish. The radiant beauty of the phenomenal world which the children paint, from their inner urge, defeat today’s so called impressionist. To render the expressive reality in terms of paintings they investigate the unknown properties of the pictorial means though their innocent power of their self. 
Art when it expresses through the creative energy broke through the outer coating from their own imagination, which some times elders fail to assimilate, their fantasy which cannot be explained.
Children’s expression through untrained, but unpolluted endowed with sincerities vision,
Through which they are capable of seeing things not in parts, but single line finish whole picture, giving us the tint of abstractions of today’s modernism. It is a surprise that their movement of brush has gone to realism to surrealism, without their knowledge. Some times they play with colors, with their empty mind resulting in an unusual arrangement of several incompatible images of joint in one spot. Their radical simplification of forms with pure colors which move into a large pattern tied up to the surface emerged from their unconscious outpour. It appears as if the child artist to rediscover something from the unknown. If we try to analyze their presentation we feel as though it is immerged from their inner strength endowed with innocence, simplicity, unbiased and also free from evaluation like good and bad.
Children’s colors from surface always vibrate with depth as if colors speak the rough stories. In few paintings we can see symbolized culmination with the idea that it is possible to distill a mental state of a series of decoding. The children’s have used colors in some places in their own way may be with intension to bring forms without any material assistance. From the other side it is not fare to judge children’s paintings. Competition always breeds hatred and division. This will break the natural divine love existing in them, each child is best its own way. Encouragement will alone push them to flower themselves. Two great artists Paul Klee and John Miro happened to visit a children’s exhibition usually visitors comment simply ok, good , etc…, but these two artist their opinion on their way to home, they said to themselves to each other that it is better the ‘adults stop paintings’.
In some paintings some symbols transcend nature. Children’s painting consists only of the representation of things both real and unreal as absorbed by them. The child artist no longer seeks an order in things which he or she has painted. With colors the child painter has entered upon new realism and colors is not defines in some places but direction of transition of the some kind projects itself. Some children have own perception of expression, prompted from self and do not copy too much from the nature instead take from their dream and go ahead and paint.
Reviews by Mr. K Pundalik Shenoy
Senior artist and art critic
