ANGELS CHILD ARTISTS

VISUAL IMAGES in spontaneous, directly-rendered child art communicate emotions and complexities that words cannot.

The ability to speak non-verbally is particularly important for children.

When it comes to producing art, little children are truly masters of the moment. Unlike older children and adults, toddlers around five and seven work impulsively with no thought about creating a finished product.

Maynah, Maria, Harem, Hannyia, Merium, all draw passionately when the moment seizes them, usually early in the morning when they wake up.

Weaned on contemporary baby literature and fairy tale classics, they all have fertile imagination. Currently in the grip of all superhero craze, Hadi, Ibrahim, and Dawood the boys imagery is based on on their fascination for Batman aka Bruce Wayne and Gotham City.

Understanding that art is a language their parents have provided them with art supplies their parents have provided them, and tables in a workplace for ''messy art'', where they all create at will.

A tally of their drawings over the last six months reveal how rapidly children can move from  utter formlessness   to legibility and marked definition of object and person if they have talent and are suitably motivated.

Child art, like most child behaviour, is direct and uncensored.

Young children do not critique their work. Enjoying their spontaneous application of paint and unrestrained creation of lines and shapes on paper, they paint freely and with pleasure, relishing the freedom of choice, thought and feeling.

Visual images communicate emotions and complexities that words cannot and this ability to speak  non-verbally is particularly important for children.

A child's art should be reviewed slowly and with quiet interest before making any comments because pictures sometimes communicate sad or angry feelings that are not ''pretty'' at all.

In his book The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin encouraged artists  to try to recover what he called the ''innocence of the eye'', to represent nature with freshness and vitality of a child, or of a blind person whose sight has suddenly been restored.

''A child sees everything in a state of newness,'' reiterated Charles Pierre Baudeaire in The Painter of   Modern Life,.........''genius is nothing more nor less than childhood regained at will.''

In 1904 Paul Cezzanne told Emile Bernard : ''I would like to be a child.''

The idea of childhood as a domain of innocence and freedom was an 18th century development , associated with Rousseau and Locke, who both wrote treatises on education [before that children were considered mini adults].

But it was the craze for primitive art in the first decades of the 20th century that prompted artists to look at children art seriously.

The Honor and Serving of this  publishing continues in the future. The World Students Society thanks author Salwat Ali.