Children’s Art Show In Whangarei

Northern Advocate, 18 July 1949, Page 5

Children’s Art Show In Whangarei

Pupils from Whangarei schools Hocked today to see the national childlen’s art collection which is being exhibited for the first time ki Whangarci at the Druids’ Hall. The collection was formed during a refresher course for teachers of arts and crafts subjects at Feilding. The Whangarei showing is sponsored by the Community Arts Service. Included in the exhibition are examples of paintings by schoolchildren from the primers to Form VI. Considerable interest has been aroused by these paintings wherever they have been shown, as they are products of the new system of art education whereby the children are encouraged to express themselves fully and are not bound rigidly to reproduce models such as pots and pans or inkwells. That this new system has the advantage which its supporters claim for it is at least partly borne out by the quality of much of the work shown in the collection. Possibily the pick of the paintings is one by a secondary school pupil of a stylised human face on a chequered background with a flowing, curtained ellect above. IMAGINATIVE POWER Coloured in vivid poster greens, violets. reds and yellows, the picture is particularly striking. Strong imaginative power has been shown by a Maori-Chinese boy in a drawing illustrating a story of Ilongi spearing two young boys. Built up from a scribble pattern, the picture’s cave-painting style is intriguing. For strong line rythm. a secondaryschool pupil’s painting of a man fishing from a dinghy is probablj’ the best.

Most of the work is in tempera, and the effects of light which this medium can produce has been well brought out in several paintings of tree trunks. Contrasting with the rest of the collection is a group of five pictures, all from the one school. Done in a restrained chocolate-box style, they appear as if they have strayed into the exhibition from the post-card counter of a stationary shop when compared with the flaming oranges and reds and bright blues and greens used by the other children.