Lily is an abstract artist. As you can see from her artwork, she doesn’t create anything recognizable. The teacher in me wonders if I should worry about her fine motor skills; the parent in me rejoices that she is using her own creativity and imagination without preconceived notions of what things should look like. No sticks with green balls on top for trees, or boxes with triangles for houses. Just pure, happy, joyful art. One of her favorite birthday presents was from her aunt, which included a sketch book, round stickers, metallic contact paper to cut into “stickers,” and paint. She hasn’t even gotten to the paint yet! She has spent hours making pictures for all her classmates, which impresses me in two different ways: 1) She is showing me that she may not be diagnosed with ADHD in the near future, and 2) she cares for other kids. There was a birthday party for one of her classmates this weekend, and so we bought him a present. She wanted to be sure the other kids did not feel left out, so she made all of them a picture, like the one below.
One of the reasons she may be feeling so inspired is that last weekend we went to the Contemporary Art Center in Peoria to see the exhibit my sister curated. It’s called Painting Pink Pajamas, and if you’re in the Peoria area, please drop in and see it! Here’s a picture of Heather with Emmy in front of one of Heather’s paintings.
I really liked the work of one of Heather’s friends, Nicholas Nyland. If you check out his website, be sure to scroll over the picture of Time Machine. It shows the inside! He also writes about abstract art on his website, and I like what he has to say about it. Just click on the Hello link.