Arts and Culture Blog

Arts Council Meeting

11/5/2021

Year 5 ARTS COUNCIL – Class 8 – 5th May 2021
Theme: Working from Imagination
Shahria (director)
Sadika
Rehan
Rayyanul
Ameelia (scribe)
Safiya
Hasan
Zahraa

In spite of some technical problems we looked at several paintings by Henri ROUSSEAU (known as The Tax-collector Rousseau because he wasn’t an artist by profession)

1. TIGER IN A TROPICAL STORM (1891)
2. NEGRO ATTACKED BY A JAGUAR (1910)
3. EXOTIC LANDSCAPE (1908)

Some comments:
This painting is very flowery, with bold, clear colours.
If you look closely, there are lots of little lines in the paint. It makes it looks like tropical rain.
It is very detailed. The weather? Mild and warm – yes, tropical.
The tiger is trying to stalk its prey. It looks a bit wooden, not as if it’s real.
You have emotions in your mind when you work imaginatively.
It’s set around the equator. The leaves are long and waving. The leopard, or jaguar, is biting the man, and plants are everywhere in the scene. They’re right in front. The human is in a weak position.
The sun is beautiful and red, in the centre of the painting. Some flowers are really big.
He creates the universe of his imagination.

Arts Council notes

11/5/2021

28th April
All the members above attended. Madiha and Sakib were scribe and director again.
We looked at five abstract works:

1. LIGHT by Kandinsky (1930)
2. LOST MINE by Peter Lanyon (1960)
3. TREE series by Mondrian (1912)
4. AZALEA GARDEN by Patrick Heron (1956)
5. NET by Rana Begum (2019?)

Here are some of the many comments:
1. This one matches its title: LIGHT. It looks like an eye.
It makes me feel calm.
It looks like northern light: cool.
Its electric light.

2. It makes me feel it is reflecting my emotions.

3. These are based on trees. It’s like a mosaic.
It’s a bit scary. The colours are spreading out.
They’re different trees, not just one.
Not all of them look like trees… he creates the shape.
Some are in the winter and have no leaves – others show they may grow leaves, flowers, and fruit.

4. Does this show a particular type of plant?
They’re light brush-strokes.
He seems to see lots of humans here, instead of plants!
They’re a crowd of flowers.
It’s spring. It’s summer. Blossoming time.
Full of colour. He blended the colours in places.
The brushstrokes don’t really have a shape to them: they are blobs of paint.

5. I don’t think it’s an actual drawing.
It could be pieces of clothing (dress?) Or it might be a net.
Yes, it’s made of net. The colours - red, yellow, orange and grey – flow with the wind. How does she show volume?
The net pieces are overlapping.
She didn’t paint – the others did, but she used actual netting and arranged it to catch the light.

Azalea Garden - Patrick Heron

Arts Council Meeting Spring Term

11/5/2021

The idea of having an Arts Council is for the members to choose an art topic to discuss.

Spring Term :Class 7
Theme: ABSTRACTION, chosen by Amena - 21st April 2021
Amena
Thamim
Farhan
Marwa
Zahra Kamaly
Madiha (scribe)
Sakib (director of questions)

We discussed Abstraction in Art. How can we tell what abstract paintings mean? Are they just random, rushed strokes of paint? Although abstract artists aren’t trying to REPRESENT a person, place or thing in an obvious way, maybe instead they are trying to express a feeling, a mood or an idea. Or different feelings, moods or ideas!

We tried to imagine we were each going to do a painting that aimed to communicate a theme, a topic, an emotion. Each person chose a main colour and idea. Several people chose sadness, and a few chose anger (- these are powerful feelings and art can be a good way to get those feelings expressed).
Junaid chose a dark red, and energy as his theme.

Making music in the Autumn Term

10/12/2020

Music at Blue Gate Fields Junior School Autumn 2020 from Blue Gate Fields Junior School on Vimeo.

Arts Council Meeting No.1 and No.2

4/11/2020

The idea of having an Arts Council is for the members to choose an art topic to discuss.

There were 19 people at our first meeting in September!

We looked at examples of portraits by several different artists. We had to try to work out which ones we thought were self-portraits (what clues were there? Could we be sure?) …and which were painted by the same artist. To members' surprise six were by Picasso. We found that, during his long life, the Spanish artist developed many ways of painting. One was very quick - it seemed to have been painted in about ten minutes. There were two drawn portraits that looked much more detailed than the oil paintings.

Our second meeting involved the whole class. Everyone had just finished painting, so they knew what they were talking about! We talked some more about portraits and the many ways an artist can reveal that the models look like, and some of their character or personality. Some of the artists' choices of colour (for example, a moody dark blue, or golden yellow) helps to create a certain mood.

Next meeting: the topic is chosen by Amena and is ABSTRACT painting

Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943)

This portrait uses colour for mood.

Max Jabob, a poet (1907)

A quick portrait.

Portrait of Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky was a music composer. This portrait is detailed.

A self-portrait by Picasso

This portrait uses colour for mood.

Class 7 paint Ancient Egyptian vegetables

3/3/2020

Arts Council Meeting No.4

3/3/2020

On 12th February Class 7 discussed three of the ideas that had been suggested at the previous meeting. Two of these were about abstract art and one asked, 'What does 'capture the emotions' mean?' We tried to deal with these questions together as we looked at three paintings by the Russian artist Kandinsky, two by the Dutch painter Mondrian, and three by the American Rothko.

Eliza was our scribe. She noted that Kandinsky's paintings all showed the city of Moscow during the Russian revolution, one painted from a high building, looking down. They had vibrant colours, were full of excitement and the last one was nearly abstract (the shapes were similar and with fewer details). Then we saw how Mondrian did a fairly realistic painting of a tree, then another of the same tree that was bolder and more abstract. Rothko - a highly emotional man - made abstract paintings, one called 'Four Darks in Deep Red' which seemed to express his sad feelings, or emotions.

As usual, we had to much to say in only 20 minutes! But we will find out more in the next meeting in March.