Dragons, colourful archways, all-seeing eyes, and other mystical creatures are beginning to appear in the second storey hallway of École John Wilson Elementary School (JWES).
The Grade 4 students have spent the better part of the school year studying the creative and abstract style of the Swiss German artist and musician Paul Klee.
Students have been inspired be his eclectic style and taken elements of his paintings and made them their own through the guidance of JWES art teacher, Ruth Handford.
“This year the artist we chose really gave the children a chance to be creative and they ran with it,” said Handford.
“We began by studying the artist and their life and influences and we talked a lot about the creative eye and being able to see artistically.”
Handford said that learning about the artist as a boy made him a real character for the students and one that they were able to relate to.
The students then worked on small pieces that started off with three archways, one of Klee’s inspirations from his work in Tunisia, and worked producing their own creative painting out of the archways.
The students are now taking what they learned and projecting it onto the hallway mural in a larger then life scale for many of these nine and 10-year-olds.
“My art is colourful, and there are lots of dragons, those are my favourite thing in the world,” said Zoe Oszli, one of the Grade 4 students working on the mural.
Oszli said that she has a great love for painting a learned a lot from Klee about blending colours. One of her favourite parts of working on the mural is that everyone else in the school can see what the students are working on.
Oszli’s classmate Sarah Belbin says she was inspired by their work on archways and has created braided archways on her small canvas painting.
“I went through (Klee’s) books and saw the horses, birds, butterflies, and archways and put it all together with ocean and land,” said Belbin.
Another student said that the best part of the project is having the chance to be creative and make his own piece of work. “It is fun because you get to paint and outline and make your own creation,” said Josh Gedak. His artwork depicts a fire dragon battling an ice dragon and is displayed on the hallway mural.
Handford has chosen to highlight specific artists in her program for a number of years now and has found that the more simplified approach to learning art has been very beneficial for her students.
“I do it this way because I feel like it is more in depth and is more of an experience for them and they really get to know that artists work,” said Handford.
“Doing it this way really makes it more memorable for them.”
However, it is not only the students who get to experience the style of the featured artist but the community gets to know them as well.
“I have parents pop their heads into my classroom every year and ask me who the artist is this year,” said Handford.
And although they are studying the methods of one artist at a time, Handford still encourages the children to experiment and make the artwork their own.
“Kids have a great natural sense, they are not afraid to fill all the space they have, they trust in their creativity.”
