The woodcraft painting sessions are still going on and will end next sunday. This parent asked me what's the difference between painting here and at home. She says that she's sure that she could get the same outcome from painting at home with her kid. And what is it with Mondrian and Monet, because she would trace out Mondrian's grids and let her kid fill in the colours exactly to the painting and get the same outcome.
So i told her what i learnt in foundation about experimenting about mark making and the amount of research the artist would have gone through before reaching that outcome. It is not that the artist can't do still life or figure drawing or what most people would regard as art. They all can and would have to be able to do all of those before proceeding to conceptual art and stylizing what they do. Its like Cy Twombly and his crazy child-like mark making.
Then i also told her that Singapore actually need more parents like she. Exposing her kid to the impressionists and post impressionists at the tender age of 3 1/2. That's really cool you know. I wish my parents would do that. And this parent is not arty farty at all. They even brought her to the Louvre. And bought postcards of various painters from Post modernism, impressionism.... and tried to get her kid to match them.
Art learning starts from young. And she is doing it right because kids absorb information really really quick during this period. It is a time when kids can pick up many languages at a time when exposed, and countless information even faster than adults.
As you get older, the neural pathways in the brain become more established and rigid. Children's brains are more flexible because these pathways are less fixed, allowing them to learn new things quicker and with more creativity.
That's why there's the expression 'You can't teach an old dog new tricks.' Of course, you can teach old dogs new tricks, but it requires a lot more mental work to do it.
So the younger you start learning a language, the easier it will be to pick it up. But even older people can learn them. It's just requires more effort and usually more time, due to the nature of the adult brain. As an added bonus for older people, learning new things (especially languages) has been demonstrated to have beneficial effects on the brain and helps to prevent Alheimer's and other brain diseases).
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