In the classroom: Artists in the making...

Met oorverband
Vincent Van Gogh 1889
Courtauld Institue of Art, London

At the end of last year, I taught a short unit about Vincent Van Gogh. Very short! In just under two weeks we learnt a little about him as an artist and person, viewed a number of his pieces and recreated one. Well, we didn't so much as recreate it as use his style to create our own.

Van Gogh is a great artist to look at in terms of engaging student interest. For a start he was mad! Not in the wearing funny clothing and liking alternative music way but in the needing professional support way. The children in my class were quite savvy about issues around mental health and were all very curious to know exactly what he was experiencing. Of course, we'll never know for sure but these students had plenty of suggestions (most of them sensible).

And of course, building on this point: cutting off a body part to send as a token of affection aimed at winning back an old girlfriend is always likely to capture the attention of middle primary students. Yep, that's the story they heard and ran with... Let me share that they didn't hear this story from me but another staff member at the school who was visiting our room at the time. My version, whilst not quite as exciting, seems to be the prevailing belief in the art world at the moment though: he'd been drinking with Gauguin and suffered from something like an epileptic fit brought on by the absinthe and accidentally cut off his ear. I'm pretty sure they'd have enjoyed that story too!

Following this discussion we listened to Starry, Starry Night. (As proof that my husband is correct in claiming that I rarely listen to the words of the songs I enjoy, I never realised that Starry Starry Night was about Van Gogh. Yep, I just admitted that publicly. I'll never live it down now.)

We viewed and discussed a range of art in small groups and discovered that over time the colour palate changed and so did the subject matter. I found outlines of a number of pieces so that we could see the way Van Gogh used lines to create movement and shape.

Stilleben mit 12 Sonnenblumen
Vincent Van Gogh 1888
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Examining the sunflowers

Finally, we moved to our own creation. It was early summer at the time so the husband who'd laughed so mightily at my earlier ignorance redeemed himself by having sunflowers delivered to our classroom for us to examine before and as we created our own versions of Van Gogh's Sunflower series.

I purchased a canvas for each child so that we could double up and use these as the end of year gifts for the families. (In a school with such high enrollments of children from religious backgrounds other than Christianity I was pretty keen to send home a gift that wasn't exclusively about Christmas.) I guided the children through the drawing of the horizontal line and a rough vase shape and then encouraged them to create their own interpretations.

I'd never heard such quiet painting!

Cooperation in colour blending.

The children rotated through our wet area in small groups in almost absolute silence as they painted their sunflowers. They cooperated to mix paints, and shared beautifully. It was an absolute joy to watch. (And terrifying at the same time, the potential for trouble was HUGE!)