Every teacher recognizes the “ah ha moment” on a student’s face. An art teacher’s experience goes one step beyond – when they’ve achieved that “right side of the brain” status that was popularized by the Betty Edwards’ 1979 book entitled Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It’s that verbal-and-analytic-ignoring “nirvana” when an artist slips over into a world of lines, spaces, relationships, lights and shadows.
Although Edwards had her detractors in brain science, artists were quick to line up in her defense. Many adult artists even call their creative hours therapeutic. One of my new Saturday Morning Painters said just last week that she’d never had three hours go by so rapidly. It takes you away from the chatter and drama of everyday life and offers a restful
Lil’ Painter by Marti McCoy – “This pensive little girl is just a representation of the “right side of the brain” look my students often got.”
place for the mind. Ever think about why patients in mental wards are quickly offered art materials to express the emotions and turmoil they are feeling? What that opportunity presents is a few minutes or hours away from , or purge of, their problems.
It is pure joy for an art teacher to see the light go on when a child realizes why and how a famous artist has achieved a mood or expressed an idea that solves a question in their own minds. One day at the Indianapolis Museum of Art I saw two of my fourth graders explain a rather abstract painting to a group of visitors from the Netherlands. I, and the visitors, were so pleased and excited to view the work through the eyes of youngsters and see exactly what the artist had in mind.
Creativity brings such joy to both the creator and the viewer that it holds a very special place in every culture. There is not even a word for “art” in some cultures, because everything they do is “an art!”
