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Saturday, January 23, 2016

Interpreting the Masters

I discovered my love of art in college. I was a Psychology major but had to choose several electives. I chose Art History and I just LOVED it! I was fascinated by the lives of the artists and what the "experts" would debate was the meaning behind certain works. If I had taken that class my freshman year instead of my junior year I may have changed my major. But most of all I just loved looking at the artwork. I have no artistic talents at all (besides maybe an eye for photography)-so I am in awe of the expressions, ideas, etc. that artists can capture in their works.

I also love using paintings in my classroom. Whether it's a storytelling exercise-look at this painting and tell me a story about it, or thinking about what the artist was trying to say or learning about certain techniques. Often times we will learn about an artist and look at their famous (and sometimes not-so-famous) paintings and try to recreate our own versions of them. In this case we took Starry, Starry Night and did attempt to recreate the painting using our own vision. There have been times I've asked them to re-interpret a classic like this and then paint for example, what Sunny, Sunny Day would look like by Van Gogh-using the same techniques.

Here is our interpretation of Starry, Starry Night!

















2 comments:

  1. You do such a wonderful job of tapping into their creativity.

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  2. Starry Night is a wonderful painting for kids to explore and experience with their own paintbrush.

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