August 25th 2010
Did you know that the Moi Government removed ART from the school curriculum and that our present government have yet to resurrect it? This means a whole decade of Kenya’s children have grown up without knowing anything about ART. Hard to believe!
Both the Mobile Art School, MASK, and the RaMOMA children’s wing try in part to put that right, so that a few lucky children benefit from the likes of John Githiri at MASK and James Mbuthia and his team at RaMOMA.
ART education is not a luxury. It is an essential component in every child’s development.
What a splendid exhibition this is. it’s a celebration ! Why are all you children genius’s – Picasso’s and Matisse’s everyone!
Do you know, everyone is unique until the genius is removed and then we all conform, to fit in and we join the assembly line! A sad fact really, that each of us has a potential to be brilliant, until it is knocked out of us!
We are here on this earth, to become our real selves – and as you can see ART is one journey that can make that happen.
In the book “ Some Other Rainbow”, by John MaCarthy he describes his experience during the 5 years he was a hostage in Iran. He had existed on a dreary diet for years, and one day his captors gave him a bowl of cherries. He waited for days before eating them – because he could not stop looking at them and their fantastic colour.
Colour plays a bigger part in our lives, more than any of us know.
Feast your eyes on the light in this room; the colour is all sunshine, and it brings us great joy. We need to be aware of our children and what they can teach us.
Children just do it.
In fact, ONCE we could all “ just do it” too, ..until something happened, somebody disapproved or suggested a different way to do something that we were ecstatic about. And a light went out!
Let us look around and notice what is in this room. Doors, windows, ceramic tiles, maybe a sculpture, a table, the inside of the room itself, our clothes, our shoes, our bags… Each and everything you see once started with a drawing !
Drawing is fundamental to ideas about life – painting, weaving, modeling, making, creating is an ACTION of those ideas.
Most of us DO things, in order to HAVE something, in order to BE somebody.
Why don’t we just BE…. and the DOING follows, and the HAVING is there.
Such a simple little turn around of thought, can make a huge difference in our lives.
ART is a reflection of society (need I say more?). Modern Museums of Art in the West are full of decay, .full of urban art, full of banality baffling and upsetting. What is happening in the WEST? (Actually, look at the exhibition up stairs in the Dodhia Gallery) Art reflects this.
Now is the time teachers can make a difference. Become aware of your power. Let the children BE, let’s draw away, colour our lives, fly away with our imagination, learn skills, LEARN TO THINK ANOTHER WAY.
Each day these little steps give our children wings. This wondrous exhibition is a prime example of all that can be achieved.
Everyone of us has a golden essence inside, creative and beautiful… Let it be the beginning of our children BEING, let us be responsible.
Art opens doors to REAL thought, that is conscious thought.
Most of us are unconscious. And most of us don’t realise THAT whilst we are so busy DOING!