From the brushes of young artists, water lilies in winter

Robin Yuran had a full room of budding talent for her Young Matisse class on Saturday morning, Feb. 4, at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon. Every Saturday at 11 a.m. through the end of February, Yuran invites children ages 6 and up to join her in the library, roll up their sleeves and get in touch with their artistic side. 

Combining hands-on activities with a bit of art history, she guides her young pupils through the passions and perspectives of quite different painters — Keith Haring, Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso to name a few — and then lets the childrens’ inspiration take flight. 

On their own canvases, the young patrons of the library tried to imbue their work with the style of the artists they’ve just learned about — an homage, not mimicry. 

Free from any kind of paint-by-numbers rigidity, their paintings at the end of the class may follow a similar theme or color scheme depending on the artist they studied, but each is unique. The youngsters are motivated by methods they may have just learned and points of view they may not have previously considered.

Yuran explained that teaching children about Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky’s abstract work involves also teaching them about his synesthesia — a neurological syndrome in which one type of stimulation instinctively and often unexpectedly  leads to another, such as assigning colors to concepts such as letters or numbers. 

More poetically, Yuran described it as “the blending of senses. Kandinsky saw music in color and he assigned emotion to his shapes and his colors. And he didn’t start painting until he was 35!”  

On Saturday the master of the morning was French Impressionist Claude Monet. The children set to work on their own variations of his series of water lilies, based on his garden in Giverney in France. The results are currently, and colorfully, decorating the library.

Later that day, children’s book author Caroline Nastro stopped by to read her book “The Bear Who Couldn’t Sleep” aloud for the audience. It’s the story of a young country bear who wanders aimlessly during a bought of insomnia and ends up in the busy, bustling center of New York — the city that never sleeps. 

After reading the tale, Nastro presented a slide show of work by the book’s illustrator, Vanya Nastanlieva. She showed outtakes and design concepts for the book, so that the children could see what a long and ever-changing process it is to be a professional illustrator for a published work.