Our three-year-old has recently become interested in titling her paintings and drawings. It's interesting watching her process of decision-making; sometimes her titles are informed by visual associations (a drawing with lots of circles might become "The rocks on Gran and Grandad's hill") and sometimes by images from stories that are currently on her mind. I like the simultaneous association/disassociation of her titles; they are narratives in their own right, which, like
the painter Cy Twombly's titles, bear only a tangential reference to her mark-making but are spurred into life by the images.
She has also become interested in making little books, with a drawing on each page accompanied by words which she dictates to me. It's hard to keep up with the flow of ideas, and I have to write very quickly.
Here's a page from a recent book.
"This is about earthquakes. Eggs fall down. Houses fall down. A crane tries to rescue people. Churches fall down. You have to get under the table or mummy gets you in the doorway. We have to go through a dirty river and that's liquefaction."
2 comments:
How lovely. My son went through a similar phase re little books with drawings. He drew for days and days after both the Sept and Feb quakes. It's a great way to help kids deal with the mixed emotions. I think adults would probably benefit from doing the same thing!
Sleater-Kinney have a song called "Light Rail Coyote". It's about Portland, Oregon, but it includes a line "Oh, dirty river, come let me in!" I think it's time to bring on the dirty river love.
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