Your creative potential

While I patiently wait for Dominica Grammar School CXC students to send it samples of their work, here is a sample from one of your fellow students (my son) who is not taking art. 

Tristan made the drawing when he was five. It is a picture of a house he one day intends to build. If he can produce his own masterpiece at five you can produce yours at sixteen. Remember what I told you about creative potential diminishing between birth and sixteen. Rediscover your creativity before it's too late!

An elephant with the ears/wings of a butterfly

While waiting for my Dominica Grammar Students to send in their work, let me introduce a student that recently contacted me regarding pursuing her interest in art.

Dionne sat CXC in Visual Art when she was a student at Goodwill Secondary School. Regardless of her passion for art and her undoubted talent, she did not do well. In fact her paper was returned unmarked. She is not alone in this predicament. My most outstanding Dominican student took the exam a few years ago and came away with no more than average marks. Unlike mathematics and science there is no right or wrong answer. Everything depends upon the examiner's ability to recognise emerging talent. 

In my experience students fall down, not so much on the work that is done on the day of the examination, but on the work that is prepared and submitted beforehand. In particular this applies to the "Journal" element. For this year's students the handing-in-date for the journal - which covers a two year period - is barely a week away. Nevertheless,you still have time to dip your pen into a glass of creative nectar and come up with something lyrical. 

Below is one of Dionne's paintings: an elephant with the ears/wings of a butterfly. Now that is what creativity is all about...a different way of seeing. 

If you think that an elephant with ears/wings of a butterfly is weird, Paul McCartney of "Beatles" fame once said:

I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.

Dionne is now a student at the State College. But alas, because the college offers nothing in art she is instead studying Law Enforcement. 

Practice, Practice, Practice

Before I begin commenting on student's work, let me show you what practice can do. 

The watercolour below is the first that I ever painted. The year is 1960 and I was seventeen years old. I remember taking myself off into a remote field so that no one could see the mess I was about to make. I realise now that my brush was too small and my colours too dry. At the time I considered it to be a complete failure but now I see it as a brave attempt.

 

Move forward to the year 2000. A similar subject but what forty years of practice can do!

From the very beginning I realised that speed of execution to be the secret of a good water colour. The first painting took me fifteen minutes and the second took me fifteen minutes....plus forty years of practice!