Color Speaks
Colour speaks. Its universal language passes overall boundaries of race or nation,
understood by everyone to some degree, if not by the head, then by the heart.
It speaks to the unlearned no less than the learned. Children understand and respond to it immediately.
— Gladys Mayer, The Mystery Wisdom of Colour
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A long time ago in a time between other times, the earth was sad. It was brown and barren and there was nothing colorful at all on the surface. So the earth asked for help from its friends the sky, the sun, and the ocean. Each of the elements thought for a while and they decided they could help their dear friend the earth. So the sun swooped down from the sky
[swoop the watercolor brush with some yellow from the upper left to the middle of the paper]
and gave the earth some yellow. Then the sky swooped down and gave the earth some blue
[swoop the brush down from the upper right to the middle of the paper touching the yellow a bit and making it green –but just a tiny, tiny bit of green].
The earth saw what was happening and said “What is that new color? That new thing? I love it! Can you make me more?
Then the ocean came and said ‘If I cooperate with rain and lake and all the water on earth, we can make you much more green. For these new things called plants need air (the sky), sun (the sun), and water (the ocean) to grow and multiply.” And with that said, the ocean spread out with the help of rain and covered the earth with green!
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At Wah’ -Sha Academy Academy, Watercolor painting is an experience of color, not form. Because the wet paint is laid on wet paper, the colors flow, blending into one another in beautiful, unexpected ways. We tell stories as we paint that are directly relevant to their experience further bringing to life the colors on the page.
Pulling from the Waldorf Education tradition, the child explores color through his ‘feeling life.’ How far does the lively, joyous yellow wish to radiate into the surrounding white? How happily and safely protected it feels when surrounded by blue, if their meeting leads to a delicate merging of each, producing a third color, green, which is not dense or heavy, but more like a gentle bridge between its two “friends”. Or, in a different exercise, one might begin with green (pre-mixed) as the first step taken by the colors in “building a house”. The green lays itself down evenly across the bottom to be the floor of the house, measured in an amount suitable to the page as a whole. The bright, active red comes to its rightful place, sitting in the middle on the green floor while also arching above to form the walls and roof! Now yellow and blue contribute their part. And what do they offer their two friends and each other in this story? The teacher’s task will be to embody the conversations of the colors with each other in a language felt and understood by the children.
This is truly a magical experience whether during the early or later grades and provides a time for relaxation and inner exploration. Our Watercolor time is a guided group activity, and Wah’ -Sha also maintains both an extensive Reggio Emilia-inspired art center for free exploration as well as monthly suggested art projects reflecting our monthly curriculum and a progression of art skills.
