Proud mommy art post

For six weeks this spring Myles was enrolled in a weekly art class with some of the other Beijing area homeschoolers.  What particularly attracted me to the program was that the classes were held in a real studio in Dashanzi, close to 798, and the kids got to use real materials. The final week they painted on actual canvas.

Going into the final class and knowing that he would be painting on real canvas, Myles was originally planning to paint some sort of dinosaur scene (not a surprise as most of his paintings and drawings in the previous weeks were of dinosaur theme).  He also wondered if perhaps the teacher would let him cut out parts of his painting, like Titus Kaphar, whose work he first saw so many years ago in Harlem and apparently left a lasting impression on him.  I told him I didn't think the teacher would let him handle exacto knives. I was hoping, anyway.

I left him at class for the two hours and when I got back I was surprised to see no dinosaurs or cut-outs. In Myles' painting we can instead see the sunshine which is giving way to rain, which on the far right becomes the raining money.  While raining money is not my favorite subject for him to contemplate, I can appreciate that he was actually inspired by a four or five hundred year old temple painting. The previous weekend we were in Hebei again, visiting the desert and Jimingyi with Katie. We spent quite a bit of time again studying the surviving murals in the temples, and particularly in the Temple of the Wealth God. Our guide that day wanted to point out to us the raining money in a mural in that temple.  This same guide who kept a close eye on not letting us take pictures insisted on taking Katie's picture under the raining money, her hands extended as if she were catching some.

The art studio, by the way, is Beijing Color Studio, and we are really looking forward to organizing another class in the fall.

Update:  Here's a picture of Katie and Myles in front of that Ming-era mural.  The photo was taken by the guide and is a little fuzzy.