Remember the Time

Week9 Paint Experiments

Jose, Matthew, Verenice & Maryn

Andre, Vanessa and Mariana

Mahliya, Angelo, Fer and Rafa

Sammy & Maritza painting

Remember when you colored a page in your favorite coloring book or made holiday crafts without a care in the world. Just applying color (crayon, marker or paint) was fun! There was no preconceived judgement of your ability, you just did it. The cherry on top was exhibiting your creation on the classroom wall or your home refrigerator. You put your work be out there for others to view without fear of judgment. Do you remember that?

I know that memory is within you, a saw a glimpse of it last week. My hope is for all of you to tap into your early life, when being creative and imaginative was intuitive, and judgment was a little speck in the confines of your mind.

Since those days, some of you have experienced harsh critiques or ridicule that have led you to hold back or limit the possibilities of what you can do and who you can be. If this is the case for you, my hope is that you find courage in the safe and supportive environment of our classroom to let that negative experience go. I strongly encourage you to allow yourself to express your story. In this project I’m committed to supporting you in painting your reality; even if it means staying a little later with you to figure out how to mix the right shade of red or to help you make your painting pop a little brighter.

For those of you that feel most comfortable expressing yourself visually, it may be because finding the right words is hard to come by. You may feel most like yourself when you’re composing an image and not having to talk about the thoughts in your head. I understand that there is meaning behind the energy of your brush strokes or the symbol you slipped in hoping others will understand it without having to spell it out. A comforting aspect of art expression, that you may have figured out, is that everyone responds and interprets the artwork based on their own experiences, therefore you don’t have to worry about being completely vulnerable. You can always let the audience make their own conclusion about what they are looking at. I hope to support you in articulating the elements that make up your work.

It is a myth that humans are either right brain or left brain. We use all of our brain to respond to our environment. You are at an incredibly exciting time of your brain development. The more you try to do new things (such as expressing yourself through writing/visual art/music) the more your brain changes and strengthens learning networks of neurons. Through new activities you build new neuronal pathways that may have disappeared because of lack of use - a process known as neural pruning. Through this project you are trying to save those neuron networks first built when you were finger painting as a child.

In the following weeks you will be fully immersed in strengthening the creative and scientific processes in your brain by setting up an experiment to paint on canvas with acrylics paints. I hope you will allow yourself to feel the joy of connecting with something you feel passionate on a whole new level.