Art shouldn’t be seen as ‘keep them entertained and busy’ with no growth and development towards skills and knowledge to equip children and educators with a visual language to make, explore, express and create meaning.
Many teachers dismiss themselves as artists because they cannot draw realistically. Drawing realistically doesn’t make you an artist – would anyone say Picasso was not an artist?
Being able to draw is an attitude of mind, a learned physical and cognitive skill no different to the skills learning that leads to being able to write your name.
Teachers are making a mistake to label themselves as not artistic and they should not abdicate responsibility and leave it up to children to discover for themselves if they happened to have been blessed by the arty fairy at birth!
Teachers need to shift their mindsets, attitudes and beliefs to ensure children have a visual art pedagogy that gives them the opportunity to learn and experience the joy of art.
“Rather than develop a list of rules about what we should and shouldn’t do when it comes to visual art pedagogy, I believe we need to shift the mindset.”
Neuroscience confirms that the left and right hemispheres of the brain process information in different ways, with the left hemisphere being verbal and analytical and the right being non verbal and intuitive.
The idea that people are ‘left brained’ or ‘right brained’ has been more or less debunked.
“However, it can be useful to think about which hemisphere of the brain might be dominating for certain activities and train ourselves to use the functions of the right brain more effectively when engaged in tasks of representational or visual interpretation.”
During her workshop Gai encourages participant to do a number of exercises, like drawing their hand without looking at the paper, or drawing the famous vase/face image (http://drawright.com/try-an-exercise/) to switch off their left brain function of critical thinking and free up the intuitive and right brain side, the theory being the left brain will stop the right brain engaging in the arts freely.
Gai conducts the same exercises with students at the University of Wollongong. The aim is to challenge people’s belief that they are not capable of learning to draw, which is a cognitive and physical skill that anyone an learn, and improve with practice.
Gai recommends teachers free themselves up to explore and experiment with visual art for themselves and their children.
