Painting with Children

From Eren Topcu in Istanbul - TURKEY

Eren talks about her experiences of painting and creativity with two Crystal children in Turkey.

I am a 2D animation artist. I live in Turkey-Istanbul.

I used to work in animation and production field untill today. Due to the changes I experienced in my life and in my self I felt drawn to work with children.

As this intention came to me, life assisted me to move toward this direction and gave me two wonderfull presents before I start doing it professionally. I want to share these experiences and hopefully more of them with you as long as I keep working with them.

Few weeks ago I was in Bodrum - Gumusluk in Aegean area of Turkey for a movie project. There I started to think that I was no longer enjoying to work in this field and to dream about painting with children. I was there only for three months and due to the project's duration I was supposed to be there at least six months more. There were young families with amazing children and all this time long, three new babies joined us. I prepared announcement papers for "painting with children" and sticked them to reachable places, then I started to wait for calls. But, as Gumusluk is an alternative space to hide for people bored of city life, people were living very isolated lives.

During this time after my decision was made, I started to live problems with my recent work for reasons outside of me. But as I needed to earn my lifving, this would require me to come back in Istanbul. I finished with my work and took my last week there to rest. Within this last week in Gumusluk, while thinking what to do about this work, I met a TV promotional of "Turkey Autism Foundation" . As I recently read about New Children, I called them and learned about how they classify these children "autistic". The criterias were lack of focus, retarded speaking, lack of communication. I asked how old these children were. The lady on the phone told met hey were mostly born at 2000- 2001. We had a nice conversation following this information and decided to arrange an interview when I was in Istanbul. Hopefully we'll be able to work together.

During this time, I also recieved two calls for painting activity, that I had to refuse due to my obligated return to Istanbul. But I had the chance to paint with two beautifull girls within this week.

These were Rengin and Yasemin, daughters of very new friends in Gumusluk.

First, we painted with Rengin. This girl of four years old was a piece of genious. She was very self confident, exceptionally wise, mature and full of joy beside her maturity. Her mother's native language was English and her father's was Turkish. She speaks these two languages both "perfect" and with a very large vocabulary. Her accentuation and expression was so skilled that's hard to find on an adult. She also used to play piano. We had short time to share with her but it was enough to know her gifts.

With Rengin, it was me who suggested to paint and she was already ready for this with great pleasure. We started first with her favorite colors. Rengin loves best the purple color as she names it. Our colors were so limited, so I couldn't know which purple she likes best. Then she put in order the other colors she likes as yellow, red, green and blue. She wasn't interested in orange. We painted and spoke for some time, as it was a painting game we played together, we painted each in turn.

In my turn I asked her idea about what to draw, the first thing she asked me to draw was a fish. So I drawn her a fish with curly fins. Curls excited her a lot and she went : " Wow, you are an artist!". I gave her my thanks reminding we all are artists. She liked and took it. It was her turn again and we turned the page. First she tended to copy my fish from the back side of the paper. I prefere not to let them to copy nor to paint on ready drawings. Most of the children, by their parents, since their early ages, are encouraged for painting by painting on ready drawings. But this, is a killer for independent creativity developement. In my experience, I can say I owe my painting skills and my free expression on it to my father's conscious assistance. He is also a painter. Along my childhood, he did his best to keep me away of those and opened me the free space to express my own inner world.

So I told Rengin that eveybody's fish is different than other's and each of all are uniquely beautifull, then I suggested her to draw her own fish on a new paper. This convinced her and she drew her fish. When she finished, she liked it a lot and approved that it is as beautifull as mine is . I agreed :)

This way, I saw another exciting thing about Rengin; this mature child of four years old knew very well how to make and take compliment. At one point along our time together, Rengin changed her place and sit inbetween the window and the paper. While changing her place, considering she might block the light coming from the window, with a wise smile, she said :
" My eyes are enough to enlighten you!"
To be honest it took me a while to be sure what I really heard. Somehow this sentence attracted my attention but didn't ring the bell clearly, and Rengin needed to repeat it for three times smiling, to make it sure that it was understood. In some seconds, I smiled her back, and I believe we both understood eachother :)

I haven't have the chance to see Rengin again before I left, but this short sharing was so full, exciting, encouraging and heart warming to me that I am so thankfull to her.

In the same week I had the chance to paint with Yasemin.

Yasemin is quite different than Rengin on communicating. She is three years old. It is not easy to make her open the door unless she wants to approach. But she is peacefull in her world. Like Rengin, Yasemin is also exceptionally wise, but she prefers to live in her own world rather than sharing it. Since I realized her special behaviour, I tried to approach her a couple of times, but she seemed not interested. It was only when I take my interest back that she was interested to me. As I know this behaviour from my childhood, I let her to come to me when she wants to do it. Untill it happens, she didn't know about me, nor about my interest in painting. It was so surprising that Yasemin came to me one day,in a very unexpected way, with a drawing in her hand. She showed me her drawing with an naughty smile, with her eyes locked in to mine.

I was very surprised, not only because this sudden closeness, but the way she knew how to steal my heart. Actually, it was already done at the moment I saw her first, but it was a great wellcome to her very precious space :)

The paper was full of lines and triangular pyramid looking forms were attracting the attention at the first sight. I asked her to tell me about her drawing. And she did.

" These are the ducks" she said showing the triangular forms at the left side.

" And these, these are the swords" she said.

On the paper, there was a sword, even a scimitar which was drawn very definitely.

" The ducks are here, and the swords are here" she said showing left and right sides with her pencil. She was drawing one definite sample of her symbols and multiplying them with unidentified lines. She was incredibly sure of her self when telling as she was when drawing. The use of her hand was also perfect in both. The rest of the paper was filled with dynamic spiral strokes. I expected Yasemin to tell me more about the drawing but as she directs the communication, leading her didn't work and it ended when she decided :)

Then she filled some more papers, mostly filled with spirals again. With her whole body and face expressions, she was in love with drawing these spirals :)

She was loving to draw spider nets too and was putting spiders on them sometimes. Her mother told me she loves to draw spider nets very much. For some reason it frightens her mother but I believe she associates it with something important for her. In my opinion spirals come by intuition as they are closest forms to sacred geometry, and she might find a parallelism between the nets and the grid logic she feels. However, she likes these alternating circle forms together.

The last drawing she made for me was a " flower child" as she calls it, a face formed from circles again with hair from petals. Yasemin is very talented also in music. As her mother says, every little event, every little new thing in her life is a reason to inspire her. It can make her make songs on it with lyrics :)

These two experiences were very precious and meaningfull to me. I feel slightly sad because I had to leave these shining children there. I keep in mind that they have conscious parents and a nice environment to growe their selves up and I feel good but. I am sure they had a lot more to teach me.

I came in Istanbul back last week. In order to prepare my self a litle bit before I visit the Autism Foundation, I started to work with children in my mother's kindergarden.

We worked twice within this recent week with two different age groups which were 2.5- 4 and 5-6.

We started with watercolor painting . Our subject was the rainbow. Most of the children haven't seen a rainbow yet. I haven't describe them the rainbow nor I have shown a picture of it. But I told them how the rainbow appears on sky by the light's help, with every color of our world. As they are each colors of light, I asked them to select the color they love best, to start with their favorite color, and paint their rainbows with every color they love. Paintings were surprising. It was particular to each of them. Some of them were so pure with only blue, red and yellow, some of them were based on blue, some of them were based on orange and magenta, some of them were multicolor and some of hem were brown and dark. I noticed that the older group's color expression was stronger the young ones, besides the young ones favorite colors were magenta and cyan blue.At the beginning, almost all of the young ones were pulled to the color magenta and blue like a magnet.

We have two children having speaking difficulty in the kindergarden. One of them is six and the other one is three years old. Unsurprisingly, it makes them a little anxious not to be able to communicate. But painting helps them to express their selves and calms them down. I saw the most expressive painting that I ever saw on children on one of these kids. This one is the older one. She reverses the figures down to up and right to left. She uses human figures with perfect body language. Her colors are dark but incredibly harmonic. A wild cat in motion in her picture was stunning to me. Later I learnt she was very affraid of cats. As I can not understand her yet, I prefer not to write more about her now.

In fact, most of these children are exceptionnally talented in painting for their age, their use of brush is very skilled, and their color sense is developed.These ones have a definite expresion in forms in realistic manner. Other ones aren't good in forms and they express their selves mostly, only by colors. The behaviour of their brush strokes, pressure and fluidity talks for them. But, all of them, love to play with colors. At the end of the class I ask them to pick a painting of them and tell the story of this painting. Mostly the ones with less form give more story. In fact, each of these children are another planet. And their paintings are clear mirrors to their environment.

For this reason, I believe painting is a perfect language to communicate with children and to meet their inner world including their current life, their subconscious and even their highconscious.

When working with them, I prefere to trigger their imagination with some abstract subject and stay as an observer and listener. For now I see this is the best way to open them a space to Express their worlds.Before I finish my writing, I want to invite you all painting with children and share your stories. I believe every little observation and sharing, is precious to understand their new world.

Stay with love…

Eren Topcu
erentopcu@mailcity.com