Impressionist Painting Lesson
Re-working thoughts through imagination
Young adults and teenagers everywhere face heartbreak, but in the shelters, trauma pervades. Their experiences are unimaginable to many of us. Creativity, however, has the ability to heal. It redirects old thought patterns and plants seeds of hope in an often dim world.
Considering this, I taught a lesson on Impressionist painters, the then renegades of the art world. These artists took to the streets and to nature to envision a reality that was true to their eyes. For example, Paul Cezanne moved beyond mere representation. He painted the way the gold light hit the mountains on a summer day in the View of the Domaine Saint Joseph as he saw it. My hope was to empower [my girls] to use their imaginations to become the renegades of their own minds, reworking their thoughts to communicate their personal experiences. Moreover, I thought it would be powerful for my students to employ impressionist techniques and apply them by creating self portraits or depicting positive childhood memories.
Cézanne, Paul. View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph. 1800’s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
By what other means can you create something that doesn’t exist in a split second except from the mind? From the mind springs new ideas, and we communicate these with our hands. Why couldn’t the medium of painting be used as a practice to re-work the way young adults and teenagers think about themselves or past experiences?
Above, is a painting done by a young girl who originally wanted to paint a grave yard scene. I asked her to instead think of a memory saturated with good feelings. She chose a memory set in her grandmother’s living room. She painted the scene in vibrant colors and executed it with a playful style. While she painted, I noticed a change in her mood, and saw her heart open in gratitude for that memory. I believe this exercise broke the negative cycle of thinking, even if only briefly. Remembering a positive experience brought with it the magic and joy of living. This was the power of her imagination.
What I love most about this case is that the painter was the Cezanne of her imagination. She saw her grandmother’s living room in bold colors that transcended reality. She expressed the joy that she saw in her memory. I hope she continues to do this while painting the unfolding masterpiece of her own life.