By Mikayla van Loon
Students at Gladesville Primary School in Kilsyth were proud to display an array of artwork from over the year at its annual art show.
From Foundation students to Grade 6 students, everyone had a piece on display on Wednesday 16 November, using different mediums and techniques.
Grade 3 students Chloe Locke, Indi Farrell and Piper Jones were most excited to see their Pablo Picasso inspired artworks featured in the show.
Chloe decided to do “something bright and colourful” using pink and blue as her main contrast colours, with accents of black and yellow.
Starting with a “little sketch” Chloe was able to turn that into her artwork, which used the theme of ‘calm’ because it reflected her personality.
“Most of the time I’m calm,” she said.
Indi also used the theme of calm to help design her artwork called ‘Sea Shell’ “because calm is a very good emotion”.
One thing Indi learnt about Pablo Picasso was he always put his name in a corner of his work and so she decided to do the same.
“I put my name in plain sight,” she said.
Using mostly pinks and purples in her artwork, Piper said “when I think of calm I think of those colours”.
For Grade 2 student Conor Rufford-Sharpe, his favourite piece was using a scraping technique in the paint “because it’s unique”.
“It was basically about lines. So this is supposed to be a sun of some sort and this was meant to be squiggly lines,” he said.
“We got orange and blue. So we did orange underneath and then blue on top, so when we scraped the blue, the orange would be underneath.”
Gladesville vice captain Joe Rabbi said this year learning the techniques of illusion was one of the skills he enjoyed the most.
Using pastels or crayon, Joe and his classmates drew a road, extending out in the distance, surrounded by any backdrop they pleased.
“I liked the different colours because I really love the rainbow. A lot of the time when they tell us to select a colour or something I’ll do a rainbow,” he said.
While all very similar in composition, each artwork had its own style, flair and approach to colour.
For principal and art teacher Nicki Wood, art forms an important part of education at Gladesville.
“We try to celebrate every aspect of learning at the school so through PE, through sports and we publish writing for the students, so art is obviously an art show because that’s what real artists do,” she said.
The show starts being put together in February and the aim is for every student to have four pieces of work on display by November, with some going up for silent auction to imitate a real exhibition.
Although it’s an annual event, Ms Woods said for the Foundation, Grade 1 and Grade 2 students, because of Covid this may have been their first chance to celebrate their artistic achievements.
Ms Wood said instead of teaching craft, Gladesville has a focus on teaching art and the techniques and skills needed to potentially pursue that as a career.
“This year we invited three community artists because we want our students to know art is an option for a career and there are people who work in the field of art.”
As a parent of Foundation student Kiara and Grade 3 student Jayden, Roshan Jey said it’s wonderful to see the arts being celebrated equally as much as the academics.
“It’s something nice, it’s something different from the usual. Our school is very big on the academic side of things and to put on something like an art show, it’s quite nice. There’s also that diversified thinking in terms of encouraging art,” he said.
“It’s also another excuse to come together as a community and it’s a real opportunity for all the parents to see because I couldn’t believe some of the things the kids have done.”
