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	growing child toddlers

Small Hands, Big Art
By Jean Van't Hul
Issue 143, July/August 2007

Every Wednesday morning, my studio buzzes with the sounds of seven artists busily putting the finishing touches on their paintings. Each has a different style and is paving the way to a new "ism" of contemporary art. Vivi and my daughter, Maia, work with focus, and have both embraced abstract expressionism. Marlise is a more temperamental artist, jabbing at the paper and experimenting with pointillism. Caleb, a restless type, dabbles in body art. Gus and Henry are calm and methodical in their painting, while Virginia is a wide-ranging experimentalist, always trying new things. I provide my cadre of artists with studio space and materials, letting each pursue art in his or her own way. I do this not as a master artist (I'm not one), but as a mother who has organized a toddler art group.

Each week, each artist paints new masterpieces as fresh and vibrant as those of many contemporary artists—yet they are newer at painting than anyone. These one- and two-year-olds aren't prodigies; they're just doing what comes naturally to children who are given regular access to art materials and the guidance and encouragement of the adults in their lives.

I'm an art nut who can spend hours in a museum or gallery. Some paintings touch my soul in ways that few other things can. Because art has been such an important part of my life, I wanted to share my love of art with my daughter, Maia. Shortly after her first birthday, I bought and read two books on introducing art to toddlers: Young at Art: Teaching Toddlers Self-Expression, Problem-Solving Skills, and an Appreciation for Art, by Susan Striker (Owl Books, 2001); and First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos, by MaryAnn F. Kohl with Renee Ramsey and Dana Bowman (Gryphon House, 2002).

Thus armed with the developmental stages of the young artist (as defined by Striker) and lots of ideas for activities, I was ready to get down to business—but my little artist still preferred eating her crayons to drawing with them. So I sent an e-mail to a local mother's group asking if anyone else with one- and two-year-olds would be interested in meeting regularly to do art. From that first e-mail, we built a wonderful group of six moms and their toddlers, who meet every week to create art and explore art materials with all the senses.

We began with finger painting, and since then have explored many different kinds of art activities, including making play dough, painting with watercolors and with tempera, experimenting with body art, making sticker collages, making prints with fruits, vegetables, and body parts, and some holiday-related crafts.

At times the kids spend more time playing in the tub of soapy wash-up water than actually painting. Some like to paint with a brush, mastering the tricky business of getting the paint from pot to paper; others prefer to use their hands, squeezing and sliding paint around the paper or canvas with their fingers to more fully experience the smooth, wet paint. Some are more tentative, slowly dipping the brush in paint and lightly dabbing it on the paper. Others paint with abandon, sometimes even pouring the bowl of paint onto the paper and squishing it around with their bare hands. Radford, one of the mothers, says, "It's interesting to see how they all play with the materials so deliberately—they are not afraid to get messy. To me, this is art in its purest form." Each child has a unique style, but each also goes through different phases of how he or she likes to paint. One might not want to get paint on his hands one week, only to paint solely with his hands the next.

Bobbi, one of the mothers, says about her son, "I enjoy watching Henry explore different mediums and experimenting with various materials—some of which I hadn't been brave enough to try on my own with him because of the messy factor, or just because I didn't think he would be interested or 'ready' for it yet. I would never have thought of putting a real canvas and paint in front of him at one-and-a-half, but after doing it in art group, I would."

The attention spans of our young artists are short. They generally paint or draw for 15 to 30 minutes, before the session morphs into a regular play group. We wash the kids up, then let them play and snack while the moms hang out and chat. We started by getting together just for the kids' sake, but have since become friends, meeting at other times during the week as well. I'm new in town, and this group has been a fantastic way for me to meet people. I feel as if I have found, and helped to create, a wonderful community.

According to Striker, it's important to have a dedicated art space for your child and ready access to a variety of art materials. Our art-group space would be easy to replicate: I turned a large laundry room into an art studio, but you don't need an extra room—just a space you don't mind getting messy. A kitchen would work well, or a backyard on a sunny day. Our toddler-scale art table is actually a large coffee table I picked up at Goodwill. Shelves on one side of the room are filled with tempera paints, watercolors, finger paints, no-spill pots, chubby brushes, foam brushes, washable markers and crayons, various kinds and sizes of paper, a tin filled with interesting stickers, a roll of paper towels, an old cloth towel for cleanup, a stack of art-supply catalogs, and my copies of Young at Art and First Art. The group members pitch in each week to help pay for the materials. Most of our supplies have been acquired piece by piece, over time.

Besides creating the studio, my husband and I bought Maia an easel, which we set up in our living room along with crayons and chalk. Both are washable, so I don't worry when she draws on the walls and floors. If it becomes a problem, I know I can tie a crayon to the easel with string so it doesn't go far. Maia uses her easel all the time; throughout the day she'll go to it and scribble. Art is one of the easiest things to fit into a toddler's day. As Sarah, a mom in the group, says, "I learned that it doesn't have to be a whole-day project for Marlise to do some painting."

Having paper and crayons available is a no-brainer, but you can also give children stickers and paper and let them make a collage, or invite them to draw during bath time with bathtub crayons. Young children love to draw and paint on themselves. You can encourage this body art by stripping children down to their diapers and providing special face-painting crayons. Before washing it off, be sure to take a photo of the masterpiece! You can also buy window markers for a cool stained-glass effect. And if you don't want to wash drawings off your walls, you can put the little tyke in her high chair with paper and markers.

I believe that it's important to show children how much you appreciate and respect the artwork they create. I save Maia's art in an inexpensive portfolio I bought just for her, and some of it I hang up. My mom saved our childhood artwork, and last year surprised us with a calendar she'd made using some of the drawings and paintings my siblings and I had done over 20 years ago. It was an amazing and touching gift, and something I'd like to be able to do for my own daughter down the road. Partly, I want her to know how much I value her art so that she, too, will value it. Consider framing and displaying your child's work on your walls. You can buy inexpensive mats and frames at many art-supply stores and do it yourself. It's amazing how far a simple mat and frame will go toward making a piece of art look special.

Some people want to see frogs or people or boats in toddlers' paintings. But a one- or two-year-old's art is not generally representational. For now, Maia is just painting to paint, exploring the properties of the art materials and her own ability to put them on paper. She is learning to wield a paintbrush, and to see how different colors look on paper. She isn't painting a frog yet, and we shouldn't try to find one in her work, or even point it out to her if we do see one. For younger toddlers, art is more about the process of creating, not the finished product. It would be more productive for Maia's artistic development to talk about the colors she's using or the kinds of lines she draws (straight, squiggly, dark, light), so that she can begin to put words to her art experience.

I don't expect Maia, or any of the kids from the toddler art group, to become the next Georgia O'Keeffe or Pablo Picasso. My daughter may be more interested in physics or politics than art, and that's all right with me.

But I think and hope that laying a strong artistic and creative foundation now will serve her well in the future. I want to help provide her with a mind that can think creatively, one that can give her access to, and an appreciation of, the amazing world of art. I feel that this is one of the best gifts I can give her.

Jean Van't Hul lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, Harry, and their daughter, Maia. She studied art history and studio art in college, later worked in the art and nonprofit fields, and is now a full-time mother. She believes that art is one of the great wonders of the world, and that anyone can make it an important part of a child's life.