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The Cassandra Erin Murphy Art Gallery
Spring 2002
Watching my daughter's progress through art has been something of a relevation.
At age two, most of her art consists of unintelligible squiggles. After
Andy and I exclaim over her art, we carefully write down the titles that
she gives us because otherwise we would never remember what each drawing
is supposed to represent.
And yet, her artwork has shown noticeable growth. Let me show you
several of my favorites, produced over the course of a few months.
This pumpkin drawing marked a period where she had a strong awareness of color.
For a few days, most of her drawings reflected some key color. Bananas were
yellow. Strawberries were red.
This color awareness was then followed by what Andy nicknamed her
"Blue Period," where Cassie became obsessed with the color blue.
During this time, she would draw with intense concentration, and
then come running up to us to show us what she had drawn.
When I asked her what each piece was, she'd peer at it like a psychology
student studying a Rorshach inkblot for meaning. Then she'd exclaim,
"butterfly!" or "dragon!" In other words, she decided what she had drawn
after she had drawn it.
Here are two pictures from the blue period:
In both "Butterfly" and "Pelican," I can see from the overall shape
why her pictures reminded her of those animals. But then again, I'm
her mother. If all you see is a squiggle, I guess I cannot really
blame you.
And then a month ago, everything changed again. Cassie was sitting
drawing with Katya Reimann's twins when all of a sudden she announced,
"Ladybugs have spots." And she began adding spots to her drawing.
I admit that the end product does not look much like a ladybug. But
what is important is that this is her first piece of truly intentional
art. Cassie picked a real world attribute (in this case, spots) and
added it to her drawing with the intention of creating a ladybug.
I think that's kind of cool.
Hmm
2/21/02
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