Understanding Children's Art

"I'm painting out of my mouth"

We've all seen photos of prehistoric cave paintings. From the perspective of today, they seem crude, comparable to the art our preschoolers make: stick figures, hand prints, and similar images made over and over. Few of us, however, have seen these paintings the way they were likely meant to be seen. 

Early humans could only create or view these paintings by leaving the world of sunlight and descending into the dark. The images were viewed by flickering firelight and shadows that illuminated the uneven cave surfaces, creating the illusion that they were moving, revealing themselves as more than simple, two-dimensional drawings. Those repeated figures, rather than being lots of drawings of the same thing, were possibly there to create the impression of single characters in the story being told, moving through space and time. Perhaps the artists were like today's movie directors or shamans or magicians. Perhaps the audience participated the way we do at the movies or in our houses of worship.

This is speculation, of course, but there is no doubt that the creators and original viewers of this artwork saw them as something different than we do today.

As adults who work with young children, we are privileged to be present at the creation of their artwork. As professionals, we know that if we really want to understand -- and we should want to understand -- then we must avoid leading questions or making guesses about what we see, but rather to observe the child's process, to consider that in the context of what we already know about the child, and to encourage them by saying things like "I want to know more about your picture." Many of us learned to say, "Tell me about your picture," but I've tried to drop that one because it's expressed in the form of a command, which means the child must reply. Too often, I've seen children who feel forced to scramble to respond to this sort of command, clearly making up a response, even as they speak: "It's uh . . . a . . . beautiful flower!" I find I get closer to understanding when the things I say are informational rather than directive or questioning. In that way, they become loose parts for the children to respond to, or not.

Of course, sometimes it looks very much like a beautiful flower, even if the process that produced it was emotional or philosophical or something else that the child cannot put into words. Indeed, that's why we make art -- to express things that cannot adequately be put into words. 

I once watched a boy drawing a "truck" that appeared on the paper as a series of jagged lines. I didn't see a truck on his page, but by sitting quietly with him, I eventually heard that he was making the soft rumbling sounds of engine noise as he worked. He was drawing the truck he heard, not one that one could see.

I once sat with a child as he struggled to draw an idea he had: "What if 1 was 2?" He started over and over in his effort to represent this idea for which he had no words other than a question that had been inspired by Sarah Perry's book If . . . Maybe he was conceiving of a mathematical concept like multiplication or division or a philosophical one like transformation or paradox. Maybe he was considering the way love can make two individuals into one. Whatever the case, he never quite satisfied himself, although he did insist on taking home all of his discarded efforts as if collectively they represented something to him.

Psychologists and art therapists know that children's art can tell us about the children in ways beyond what appears on the page, but it requires, as Jean Piaget's protege Eleanor Duckworth puts it, listening with your whole body. When we study children's art, looking only for evidence of geometric development, we miss the things we've been conditioned to ignore: the connectedness of meaning and understanding. It might show up on the page, but it might also be completely found in their process. And as we all know, there is far more in heaven and on earth than can be drawn on a cave wall or a piece of paper.

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