Observing my child on the break, I have come to a new conclusion in my work. I shouldn’t say come to a conclusion rather that I have caught a glimpse into, or had an insight into the true nature of art from a child’s perspective.
I watched him draw a portrait of me, his daddy. The abstraction was hardly recognizable as a human, let alone me, a specific human. It puzzled me. But to him, it was unmistakably me. I even asked hum the names of them, hid them for a couple of days, brought them backed out and he recalled exactly what they were. I was definitely perplexed.
I asked him, later, to draw another picture for me, one of a complete abstract nature. I prompted him to draw ‘happy,’ leaving it open ended. He became frustrated, unable to put the marker to the pad saying, “I can’t.” I then asked him to draw ‘sad’, ‘angry,’ ‘sorry,’ and ‘love.’ Again, it was the same answer, “I can’t.”
I was confused, almost disappointed. Here my son, drew a beautifully expressive abstraction, but couldn’t draw these basic emotions. I didn’t understand.
Later the answer came, like the sound of a piano being kicked by an elephant. It wasn’t abstraction, or expression that children worked from, rather it was ritual and ego. To him, it is the process of making marks that mean something only to him, recognizable, only to him; a truly personalized egocentric language. A ritual of himself, a process of owning his world, of making things his, like writing your name on something. It is a pure desire to make a history, one’s own history.
*painting by Zion Reeves, acrylic on canvas.
