Katharine Norman September 29, 2013 Childrens Artwork for Imagery: Looking for Culture and Theme For

this project I set out to explore childrens visual artwork with a few criteria in place, and the hopes to find a common thread amongst the works. The criteria was set first: children ranging in age from approximately four to eight, from three different countries (Japan, Mexico and Russia), and the gender was not to be known. I hoped to uncover a couple of realizations from this criteria. First, my goal was to see how big of a role culture played in the childrens artmaking, if the subjects would be drastically different, color pallets, symbols used- how big of a difference would one picture from Russia by a 5 year old look compared to that of a child from Mexico? Secondly, I hoped that there would be recognizable themes throughout the artworks. I didnt believe gender needed to play a role here; my main concern was to see what children in their very earliest stages of expression through imagery would produce. In theory, the purest imagery from these different nationalities would be portrayed. It isnt until around the age of seven that childrens artwork begins to take on ones own point of view (Lindstrom, 1970, p. 6). With this in mind, it would seem that before children hit this point, we would have a variety of generalized objects. It is usually by the age of four that children are able to make recognizable images, usually beginning with basic geometric shapes and putting them together to form human figures (White, 1957; Winner, 1993). As reported from Machotka, younger children allow color and subject matter to dominate, while once they get older, personal style, tone and composition take over (Hardiman & Zernich, 1977, p. 30). Hardiman and Zernich also identify five common subject matters among childrens spontaneous drawings and paintings, including: female portrait, male portrait, figures in group, landscape, and cityscape (1977, p. 31). For my study, I lumped the portraits together as self as I didnt get gender specific, and I also didnt find enough of cityscape on its own to not be classified with nature. What I found, nature dominated so many of the scenes, whether it was in a sea, land or city- scape, that it was the main idea to focus on. So, the themes realized through my study from the initial works of childrens art with the aforementioned criteria were family, nature and self. I reached my conclusion from a collection of imagery which can be viewed on Pinterest (http://www.pinterest.com/katnatl/exploring-culture-through-child-art/, the

board shown is an edited board, but my ideas and conclusions come from over sixty images that fit within my criteria). Strictly looking at the imagery provided, which again, is where I have drawn my conclusions, there were only two things that culturally differentiated any of the artworks. One was when any of the works included language written on the piece. The other were any pictures from Japan that included sea-animals or someone swimming: they are generally going left. I had never thought about the fact that it is pretty typical to directionally draw things the same way in which you read. Besides that, without any more knowledge than what we are provided with by the children through their imagery, I would not know what country each of the pictures came from. Malin observed a year in a multi-culturally diverse elementary school in which she sought to understand how their culture and society played a role in their art classroom (Malin, 2012; 2013). She discovered that they would often represent self and identity through their work (Malin, 2013, p. 13). Self is a strong theme I found, and I dont think it would be a stretch to even add the theme of family to self, as that is a big identifier for young children. Although, if we were to go with Hardiman and Zurnichs classifications, we could place them under figures in groups. Since Malin was looking at a broader range of elementary school age children then my stipulation of four to eight, that may account for my lack of finding identity; especially if we refer back to Lindstroms note that that doesnt happen until at least the age of seven. The only thing left to account for is nature. Nature was an undeniable conclusion as a theme while looking at my Pinterest board, yet I hardly find it mentioned in any of my research on childrens artistic development. Visually, the evidence is there. Why arent there more discussions on it? The wonder to know about children expressing themselves through, or as, their surroundings? One could only speculate that we are too caught up with the self. References Hardiman, G. W. , & Zernich, T. (1977). Influence of style and subject matter on the development of childrens art preferences. Studies in Art Education, 19(1). p. 2935. Lindstrom, M. (1970). Childrens art: A study of normal development in childrens modes of visualization. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

Malin, H. (2012). Creating a childrens art world: Negotiating participation, identity, and meaning in the elementary school art room. International Journal of Education & the Journal Arts,13(6). Retrieved [28.09.2013] from http://www.ijea.org/v13n6/. of Art & Design Education, 32(1). Retrieved [29.09.2013] from http:// Malin, H. (2013). Making meaningful: Intention in childrens art making. International onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2013.01719.x/pdf. White, S. D. (1957). Symbolism in childrens art. Art Education, 10(4). p. 7-10+18. Winner, E. (1993). Exceptional artistic development: The role of visual thinking. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 27(4). p. 31-44.