Applestar is the name of my three year old son's nursery and it has been partly responsible for what my brother has amusingly termed my 'domestic apotheosis'. Felix and I attended a parent-and-child group there for almost a year and a half before he started at the nursery. While the children (hopefully) play happily, the adults are given the chance to engage in a particular craft which is connected to the seasons e.g. making little elves out of felt before Christmas. I would like to write in more detail about this at some point but for now I shall say that it has provided me with creative inspiration, got me into crafts, and helped me to re-learn lost skills.
Felix, came home from nursery with the following piece of artwork a few weeks ago:
When it was handed to me, I gushed the requisite, 'Oh, lovely darling!' but thought, 'Oh my God. Who did he murder and does the blood splatter pattern indicate blunt force trauma or the use of a sharp-blade?' From my experience attending the parent-and-child group, I knew better than to expect the kind of scribbles you'd normally get from an early years setting. That's because Felix's nursery fits under the
Steiner Waldorf umbrella and they have a very particular way of doing pretty much everything, including 'art'.
A few weeks ago, I received the following invitation for a Parents' Evening:
If you look very carefully at the bottom, you'll see 'Parent Forums: Colour'. I didn't know what this meant, except I imagined it had something to do with the 'crafts' part of the invitation. What it meant was that we were going to discuss 'colour' and how it is approached in the nursery. What it meant was that we were going to have a go at the kind of painting our children do at the nursery; the kind of painting that produces something that apparently looks a bit CSI.
It was explained to us that children don't see colours in the same way as adults do until they are around 5 or 6 e.g. they may see red as green and green as red. So, very careful consideration is given to how colour is approached in a Steiner setting (they're quite famous for having the walls and curtains in a pale shade of pink, which is actually more like a rather soothing green to young, developing eyes).
When it comes to painting, children are introduced to primary colours one by one and use watery paint on wet cartridge paper. This makes the paint impossible to control and means that the children are not expected to 'paint a house'...unless, that is, your ideal abode is a swampy mess (hey, I'm not judging here). This method is about discovering colour and media: how does paint work? How does paint move? What happens when colours are mixed together? I realise that this may sound like utter madness to most people and I have to be honest and say I was a little skeptical during the introduction (open, yes, but definitely a tad wary).
We were all give a wooden board, told to damp sponge it so that a layer of water remained on the surface, given strong cartridge paper and told to damp sponge the bubbles out and flatten the paper onto the board. The part of me that enjoys rituals rather liked this aspect of preparing the materials. We were then given pots of watery paints (blue, yellow and red), asked to choose a brush, and given a pot of water to clean the brush and add more water to our work if necessary.
My first impulse was to see what happens when you allow the paint to drop from a paintbrush onto the surface we'd prepared. I picked yellow and began gently splashing drops onto the paper. The result was quite magical and hypnotic: each drop hit the paper and instantly spread its pigment, sending out little, fingery branches that reminded me of those 'grow your own crystal' packs I used to love as a child. We mostly worked silently and every one did different things: some creating Turner-esque landscapes and others ending up with wild nebulae of swirling colours. It was fascinating that you couldn't just force the materials to work for you but rather had to observe the effects and marvel as your own mind used its imagination to bestow meaning and narrative to the results.
I don't think the human mind can help but try to interpret its surroundings. Perhaps this realisation gets to the core of this way of working: the genesis of creativity lies in our own imaginations and the purest expression of this is not forced, requires no instruction and reveals itself
to us rather than allowing us to impose our will
on it. The point of the exercise lies in the process rather than the result, which is why it doesn't matter what the thing looks like in the end.
Having said that, this is my supreme masterpiece and I am applying to St. Martin's College posthaste:
I have entitled it 'Rothko Meets Miro'. Yes, I am a Geeeaynius.
How my lovely little boy, who is renowned for his strong will and his requirement that everything bend to it, felt when producing his piece I can only ever guess. I am grateful that I was given a little insight into his experience through the chance to be a nursery school child again for an evening. It's all too easy for adults to stop wondering and become sucked into the mundane, the corporeal, the safe, and to stop allowing ourselves to discover, to be given a little space to forget received wisdom and just be free for a bit.
So, the nursery children seem to have discovered red and I'm looking forward to them being introduced to blue and yellow (if only to move from 'slasher film' territory into something more like 'la-di-da, lovely spring flowers!').
