This blog is part of a PhD research project into the artist teacher in the classroom. What difference does it make in the classroom for the art teacher to practice as an artist? This is supposed to be part of the analysis phase and should be about sharing the research a bit and garnering some comments on what is going on in the classroom. The art room is in a middle school in Lowestoft in Suffolk on the east coast of the UK. Year 6 are about ten to eleven years old, year seven eleven to twelve and year eight are twelve to thirteen. The school faces closure in July 2011 due to the reorganisation of schools in Suffolk.
This is interesting. You might like the poem by Yeats (from memory):
You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attendance upon my old age
They were not such a plague when I was young
What else have I to spur me into song?
IE what gets you going? I’ve been looking at Ron Kitaj again. I don’t like what he was doing towards the end of his life, but it does strike me that as he was doing precisely what I think one should do as an artist,* I’ve therefore no business criticising him for what comes out. * IE artists should carry out anything they can conceive of, however absurd or outrageous or silly it might seem in the light of what others are going to say, and should be prepared to comment on anything in the world or the mind. They owe this to all the people who can’t, or won’t.
I like the idea of simple triggers