Drawing is a tool for life. The desire to express ourselves creatively begins at an early age through drawing. When we draw we see things more clearly. It encourages our individual form of expression and with practice can give us a more acute awareness of who we are in the environment we live in, a broad and powerful foundation for every child on which to build their increasing educational needs. At the heart of An Dealbh Mòr lies the steady rhythm of the working expeditions outside.The children’s relationship with the landscape and their response to it grows. They are literally getting fitter . Their hand and eye are freer, their perceptions deeper. It is also about what they feel. At best you draw with all of yourself, all your senses. The artists provide the structural backbone to the project, encouraging and enabling each person to flourish as themselves. A collaboration between the artists and children. With this accumulation of knowledge the children move onto the large-scale work with natural confidence. The relationships between certain places and forms makes sense, and their ability to work as a group. The ambition and scale of the big painting is challenging, the realisation exciting and full of hard work. A symbiosis of individuality and communality. Their fitness in the visual work carries forward to the performance as they develop their skills in expressing themselves through movement and dance, music and sound, where ideas evolve through experience, trying things out, and practice. The essence of the project culminates in the public performances, seen from above, where the children become an integral part of their own vision and musical expression of the landscape. Their painting comes to life moving between the figurative and the purely abstract. Julie Brook Read more about project at Ealain A-muigh.
