Saturday Art programme to resume this week

PARENTS looking to spend valuable time with their children while learning useful skills can accomplish all of these goals thanks to Saturday Art.

Classes resume this Saturday, January 7, with participants learning basic, intermediate and advanced skills in various forms of art including water-colour, acrylic and oil painting; textile design; batik; tie-dye; pottery; basketry; jewellery making; print making and portrait painting.

Speaking to the Barbados Advocate recently at the St. Michael School where the classes are held every Saturday for the year, Co-ordinator Linda Bowen said that the classes are designed to accommodate any individual regardless of the person’s artistic knowledge and the time that they have to spend on these classes.

For small children and adults who have no experience in art other than what they may have done at school, Bowen takes you from the beginning with lines and drawings and introduces you to the colour wheel; while persons who have more experience would be exposed to more advanced material.

There are also inter-lapping class times of 9:00am to 11:00am, 10:00am to 12:00pm and 11:00am to 1:00pm for the children from five to 15 years old, and adult classes which run from 2:00pm to 4:00pm and 3:00pm to 5:00pm.

Bowen explained that the classes, which she describes as “flexi-time,” are done in this way because the persons in each class may be on a different level, so they would be involved in different activities and therefore, you can still have inter-lapping classes as one class would not interfere with another class.

“Flexi-time” also allow persons to come when they have the time and they can come different times each week according to their schedule for that day, explained Bowen.

The classes also involve tours to various public and private exhibitions and organisations where students can see how professional artists in a variety of disciplines work. They also learn about art critique.

Some of the places that participants go are exhibitions held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre (LESC), the Queen’s Park Gallery and the Grand Salle, and year-round Highland Pottery at Chalky Mount. They also go on tours around the island so that they can paint different sceneries.

Participants are also given an art journal with blank pages for them to put their art work, other pages for them to take notes on the various subjects being taught as well as write their thoughts and emotions when creating each art piece.

Bowen also recognises the connection that the various art forms have to each other, so another technique that she employs in her classes is painting to music. She brings in and plays classical, jazz, modern and other types of music and the participants paint to the sound of the music. Accordingly, these paintings are abstract paintings, stated Bowen.