Every Child Is An Artist
TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, South Carolina
June 21, 2018 – August 24, 2018
The human instinct to create is innate. We are born into this world with a deep-seated, delicious drive to explore and to make. Armed with imagination, finger paints, crayons, and construction paper, a young child develops an aesthetic vocabulary and voice that is fresh and free, unrestricted by theory or teacher, and wholly unique. To celebrate the opening of the Children’s Museum of the Upstate’s Spartanburg satellite, local budding artists, ages three to seven, were invited to offer their artistic responses to a number of modern canvases held in the Johnson Collection. These images, alive with color, shape, and pattern, served as ignition for the companion masterpieces made by tomorrow’s Pablo Picassos. The Spanish genius acknowledged native creativity when he avowed that, indeed, “every child is an artist.” “The problem,” he continued, “is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Featured artists include Anni Albers, George Bireline, Sam Gilliam, William Halsey, Ted Potter, and Alma Thomas.