"The Doctor is in the Doctor, fixing my leg

"and you and Daddy are there, and Chloe is there too, and one doctor is getting the glass out of my foot, and then Daddy took me to the x ray, and another x ray, and so the doctor gave me a blue popsicle, and I went in the wheelchair again, and I got in the car and that's it. That's the name of my picture."

Sagan has drawn a picture of his trip to the emergency room to open up an abcess on his foot. He is in the middle of the picture, wrapped up in a sheet. The doctor is below him, the rest of us are above him in the picture.

Cliff's email

Here is the email I received from my benefactor, the donor of the original art:

I found your website reference, after deleting the slant etc., at the end. Well, hard lines and flinty gratitude, but the pictures are nice and you are doin gwell -- but two year wait. Jeeze.
I never did find hte print -- I thik I must have tosse dit and forgeotten it.
Otherwsie, how is life.

Did I say something wrong?

Cliff = Patron of the Arts of the Highest Order and Honor, Donor of Materials to Children (the most admirable sort of donor there is)

Art = Tired and Worn Out, a PERFECT match for my kids and their paint

Here is said benefactor with Sagan, Sagan is probably sometime around 18 months old:

Myra churns them out

Myra is officially more into this than Sagan.

Baby Chloe joins in

Baby Chloe is getting in on the act. At almost three months old, she has some jerky arm movements that can be translated into jabbing motions with the paintbrush if she is held the right way.

Here we see her handiwork, in yellow, embellishing one of Myra's pieces:

I knew I had it right when most of the paint ended up on the floor. That meant that I was not controlling her, only stabilizing her by holding her up and holding the brush in her hand. She's a genius!

Down to Business

Here is Sagan, with friend Myra, at work on the paintings:



They took several framed pieces and just painted everything one color. If I had given them other colors for these, they were at the point where everything would have been smeared together into a muddy brown. I will give them back to them with different colors and very small brushes to create some layers, which brings me to the subject of parental guidance.

The way I look at it, parental guidance is not a bad thing, and doesn't make a child's art a "hoax." You guide them in everything. There's no need to pretend the child doesn't benefit from suggestions like "do you think that's enough?" or "don't paint over all your work with the big brush or we won't be able to see it under there," especially at this 4 year old paint smearing stage. I'm even so narrow minded as to tell him he can't paint if he throws the brushes around the kitchen. The purist would find his behavior enchanting, and accuse me of stifling him, I'm sure.

Kid Art

Sagan is four years old. He has been painting on canvass for a couple of years, so I am a little annoyed that "My Kid Could Paint That" is coming out just as we are taking off with our new project. I don't want our endeavor to be mistaken for an attempt to do whatever it is that Marla Olmstead's family is having her do. Whatever.

Here are some of Sagan's early works, done when he was just shy of three:












While we are on the subject of the Olmstead family, however, although I haven't seen the movie I believe that the paintings my son has done are the kind of thing that a two year old produces. Mia Fineman, writing for Slate magazine, gives the biolerplate explanation for children's creativity: Like Marla, elephants approach a blank canvas with a blithe lack of inhibition and no preconceived idea of what a painting is supposed to look like. What matters to them is the process: the friction of the brush against the surface of the canvas, the creamy viscosity of the paint, and the fine-motor activity involved in making different kinds of marks, from long sweeping strokes to quick rhythmic dabs and slithery caresses.

*Yawn*

I know all about it. And at two the painting come out looking like the ones above. I prepped the canvasses for him with a color wash, gold or lavender or something kind of neutral, because I knew he would leave a lot of white space. Two year olds dab, and this is what dabbing looks like. They enjoy making marks.

Four year olds smear. They want to mush the paint over every inch of the surface they are painting, but they don't care as much about forms. The results look like this:





I think I can tell the difference between Jackson Pollack and Sagan. The difference is in the quality of materials and the composition of the piece. Sagan's art is amazing (as are his jokes, his blue eyes, and everything else about him), but I don't think a kid can paint like an adult any more than an adult can paint like a kid. It's more than just not knowing what art is "supposed" to look like. I think it is a different relationship with the canvass that an adult can't recapture.

Paydirt!

I have been trying to get my hands on this pile of old, worn out art for a while now. It has taken what feels like close to two years for my friend Cliff to realize that he can't sell any of it to anyone. These are thrift store basement finds, picked over and picked over again, given one last chance at a yard sale, and finally released. These are the kind of out of date, out of style, oak (or oak looking) framed landscapes and still lifes, some of them matted and framed nicely.

My son Sagan is going to see what he can do to spiff these up.