Dancing and Splatting

Every month, we study an artist. Of course we look at the classics, famous painters and popular ones too. We just finished a study of Vermeer's art. 

He uses the same colors and, if you look really closely, the same floor, the same table cloth, the same maps, and even the same outfits in his paintings. The same black and white checkered floor appears over and over. The Girl With A Pearl Earring is really intriguing, but his artwork tells the story of a culture obsessed with travel and music and color and class and his paintings tell the story of a man of very little means, piecing together, with what he could collect, the story of his society.

I have to admit, I was ready for something more modern. I’ve always known Jackson Pollock was the splatter painter, but that was really all I had up my sleeve. I figured he would be fun to study. It turns out that, when we took the time to really study his paintings, we found stories and songs - He often painted to Gershwin, so we had to go there - He loved to paint to music and you can tell which ones were painted to sad songs and which ones to happy ones. The kids took time to look closely at “She-Wolf” and discovered he was painting the statue of Romulus and Remus.

We took our paints and large canvas - like Jackson and turned on happy music and started splattering. They loved the patterns of the splatter and the story they found as they danced and splatted.