In the first post, I briefly described my creative session with children Doroteja (8) and Domas (5). In this and future posts, I will tell you how the drawings by these children, their interpretations and photographs inspired me to create a variety of ideas for a Neverland Portrait.
I received very distinct reactions from Doroteja and Domas about my organised drawing session. Doroteja was very happy about it while Domas firmly refused. His mum mentioned that he was afraid. However, when I arrived and greeted him, he didn’t show fear at all. He just said that I was only drawing with Doroteja, as if it was a super boring activity for him. (Besides, he had a friend over to play with.)
So, I respected his opinion and didn’t try to persuade him otherwise. It was even beneficial for me because I was able to concentrate on Doroteja alone. (After everything ended, it seemed that our whole creative session went just perfectly.)
Doroteja told me about what she likes to draw and what she enjoys about fairy tales. We agreed that everyone loves the adventures the heroes face and the challenges they overcome. I told Doroteja that we like these features the most because they reflect challenges that we face in our own lives such as disagreements with parents, or fights with siblings. This way I asked her if there was anything similar she was experiencing in her life.
”Yeees.” Doroteja shared with me how annoying is her brother, especially when he gets angry. This reminded me of a fairy tale about an angry spirit from a bottle, and I decided to tell this fairy tale to the girl. (You can read the fairy tale here.) Then I encouraged Doroteja to draw how an angry spirit could look like by using abstractions. This led us to interpretations of abstract drawings and playing other drawing games.
After a while, we took a small break and went with Doroteja to have a snack. When we came back to continue our drawing games, Domas also joined us.
I could predict that Domas would feel uncomfortable joining us. Whether it was his fear of not being able to draw, or because I was an unfamiliar person who could be unpleasant to talk to, I could fully understand and relate. So I offered Domas without any pressure to choose either to just watch how we play, or join in and play together. I told him: “To make it easier to join us, here are sheets of paper and felt-tip pens, and our current game is to pick 2-3 colours, draw something in 10 seconds, then swap the drawings and complete them however you want.” With caution and doubt, Domas joined our game.
I was amazed to see that Domas was drawing in a very different way than I or Doroteja did. Drawings by me or Doroteja woud come out as sometimes interesting, sometimes clumsy compositions of lines and colours. Meanwhile, Domas would choose three shades of burning red and energetically scribbled the entire sheet of paper.
When I saw Domas’s drawing, I couldn’t help but think of Doroteja’s story of how annoyed she is when her brother gets angry. Isn’t such a drawing a great expression of anger?
Besides, how to finish a drawing like that?? Oh, it’s a great challenge for me as an artist. But as I picked up Domas‘ drawing bursting with red energy, Doroteja suddenly said, “No! I want to… ” That was a surprise for me. Firstly, because such a drawing didn’t scare her at all (not like it did me at first). Secondly, it showed that Doroteja not only did not hold anger towards her brother, but clearly wanted to complete Domas’ work. Couldn‘t such a collaborative drawing be almost like a symbol of siblings‘ mutual support? At that moment, I saw sister’s love for her brother. Although I may be wrong because I didn’t ask Doroteja about that. In any case, it is very heart-warming to see when children do not contain anger and forgive so easily.
I am very curious about what goes on in a child’s mind when he or she is drawing one or another detail. However, I have absolutely no idea how Doroteja decided to draw a face from such a pile of red lines, including one vertical eye (just like Picasso) and one dot instead of a nose. Such faces do occur in the world of contemporary art, but, in all honesty, they would scare me. I’m sure this drawing would appear very ugly and intimidating to some other readers as well. “Why would you draw like that? It‘s better to draw beautiful faces,”- my mother would say. However, when I asked Doroteja to comment on her drawing, she calmly replied that these marks were an eye, a nose, and a red fringe. With a jaw dropped of astonishment, I remembered once again that I still have a lot to learn from children. For me, such drawings are highly valuable because they convey human emotions much better than ordinary realistic representations. (Read more about this here.)
When I returned to my studio to create ideas for a Neverland Portrait, I knew I had to use this collaborative sketch by Doroteja and Domas, as well as one of the photographs of Doroteja holding a dog by the leash. I knew I must because they have accumulated so much meaning.
First of all, it is because Dorothea told me about her brother’s anger. And later, without knowing anything about it, Domas filled a sheet of paper with red in such an energetic and expressive way that it seemed like a real metaphorical expression of his anger in drawing. And then Doroteja decided to give that anger a face.
The second significant story is that, when Doroteja told me about her brother’s anger, I told her a fairy tale about an angry spirit. Inspired by that fairy tale, Doroteja unintentionally created a sketch of an angry fish, which, she told me, she would harness with a leash if she met such a creature in a fairy tale. Later, when we were playing outside, Doroteja brought a neighbour’s dog on a leash. From all of this, we can conclude that Doroteja would want to harness her brother‘s anger with a leash just like she harnessed her neighbours‘ dog.
That’s why I had to draw Doroteja holding a spirit of anger on a leash.
Knowing this story, it may seem like I’m drawing a caricature of Domas being just like an angry dog, but this interpretation is very far from the truth.
Anger is a universal human experience. Each of us sometimes gets angry and then (at least in our minds) we act like children. So mocking someone’s anger is the same as despising your own. Such feelings can be condemned, but it is much more pleasant to empathise, understand, and love them.
The drawing, where Doroteja holds an angry dog on a leash, can have a number of meanings. It can convey how Doroteja is harnessing Domas‘ anger. Or, more precisely, how she copes with her anger that stems from being annoyed with her brother. Lastly, this drawing could convey how one girl is holding the feelings of anger that are inherent in every human being – befriending and playing with such emotions just like with a beloved dog.
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