Painting the Feeling of Nature

LANDMARKS: NATURE, ART, SCHOOLS

Week 8 – 17 New Participants

Total Landmark Participants: 145

Location: Ardee Library

Participant Feedback:

“Very well organised, and the children really enjoyed such simple projects with wonderful results. Parents got involved and there was great bonding. Thank you, let’s hope this type of project keeps up” Preschool Teacher, Ballapousta Preschool

Lisa Lipsett a Canadian artist and environmental educator, has developed a method of painting in communion with nature that depicts the interior or feelings of natural objects. The instinct to paint spontaneously is inherent within young children. Rather than an illustrative representation of the outside features of what they see, they can easily enter into a spirit of communication to the inside of nature through paint and drawing materials. By making contact with art materials through touch, a young child’s art is both sensory and instinctive.  

Lisa’s website http://www.creativebynature.org outlines a system for connecting with both the natural world and our sense of place within it. In essence generating an empathy for the environment, and allowing it to resonate through our art and ultimately our identity.

Watching preschool children working with their own natures through a path of art materials, is a way for parents to also be in contact with their own creativity. Creative experimentation is an instinctive way of communication, it can be expressed through art making as a rapid flow of unpredictability. By trying out different kinds of lines, textures, and colours, a child also explores space, thoughts, feelings and language. Rather than a pre-determined outcome, the art is in essence a sensory experience, a way of connecting to the world around them.

These examples of artworks were made by preschool children of Ballapousta Preschool, County Louth. They worked their way through an art studio of clay, mud, photographs, watercolour paint, and drawing materials accompanied by their parents who helped them along the way.