ART

“Every artist was first an amateur.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Art, as a creative and expressive subject, offers a unique platform for us to explore and reinforce our values. Through various art activities and projects, our pupils have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of each value and develop their artistic skills simultaneously.

Hope

Art holds the power to inspire hope, ignite imagination, and bring forth a sense of optimism. Through art, our pupils explore different themes and concepts that encourage them to envision a better world and believe in their ability to make a positive difference.

Respect

Art promotes the understanding and appreciation of diverse perspectives, cultures, and art forms. By engaging in various art techniques and studying the work of different artists, our pupils learn to respect and value the creativity, talent, and individuality of others.

Wisdom

Art encourages critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills. It challenges our pupils to think outside the box, experiment with different materials, and make thoughtful choices. Art also provides a platform for self-reflection, allowing pupils to develop their emotional intelligence and express their thoughts and feelings in a constructive manner.

Community

Art has the remarkable ability to bring people together and foster a sense of belonging. Our pupils collaborate on group projects, participate in community art events (Heritage Week), and showcase their work to peers, parents, and members of the wider community. Through these experiences, they learn the value of teamwork, empathy, and the positive impact art can have on creating a strong and vibrant community.

 

 

At St. Mary’s we value art as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. We aim for all children to be stimulated and challenged so that they recognise the true values of art. Cross-curricular links allow opportunities to work collaboratively and expose children to a range of different media and inspiring experiences, which will endeavour to develop children’s individual interests, thoughts and ideas. Our Art curriculum is designed to engage, inspire and challenge pupils, whilst equipping them with the knowledge and skills to be able to experiment, invent and create their own works of art. We use sketchbooks to collect ideas and record experiences in order to develop and master techniques whilst working towards our final piece. We look at the work of great artists, analyse their work and encourage an understanding of how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and nation.

The art curriculum at St Mary’s provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills taught in each Key Stage. Lessons are planned using our progression of knowledge and skills document. This document supports teachers to plan their art and design lessons suitable to their class’s interests and where possible make cross-curricular links with their current topic or link to a piece of  artwork or artists which the children will discuss and learn about.  These ideas are taken from a range of styles, genres, times and cultures and used to inspire the children’s own work through the concept, medium or subject matter. Our curriculum topics include one or more skills – for example drawing, painting, collage, 3D work or printing. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills and knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group. These skills and media are revisited in different year groups allowing for the skills to be developed.

Sketchbooks are used in both key stages to explore and experiment with skills and techniques, develop and plan their ideas and respond to the artwork of other artists or craftspeople. Their final piece/outcome may be displayed in school or in their sketchbooks.

Children will leave St Mary’s as creative imaginative individuals who have developed a love and appreciation of art. They will have developed their keys skills of drawing, painting, printing, textiles, collage and sculpture. They will also have taken inspiration from many of the great artists and be able to comment on their work. Children will have developed the confidence to express themselves in new ways, cooperate with others in shared projects and understood how art can bring people together and improve their mental well-being.  Children demonstrate our school values of Hope, Wisdom, Community and Respect through their artwork. It is displayed in our local church and some published in our parish leaflets and throughout the school for all to enjoy. On special occasions as a school, we have specific themes where a pop up gallery is there for parents to admire and purchase their child’s work. We encourage the children to review and modify their ideas as they respond to peer and adult feedback. There is no formal testing in art but the sketchbooks are used as evidence of skills taught and photographs and displays demonstrate how well they have achieved in art.

Art Week at St Mary's 

To kick off the second part of the summer term, all the pupils at St. Mary’s primary school have been creating some wonderful art pieces to celebrate the theme, ‘Connections to Nature.’

Once again, we have been extremely fortunate to work with John Worth and Cordelia Hampton-John.

John is an artist and Cordelia is an art and education consultant.

Throughout the week each class got to learn more about an artist, the artists chosen all have a passion for nature and they represent this in their artwork.

Reception Class- Artist John Worth

John and Cordelia very kindly opened their doors to Reception class! Each day the children walked to Marlow Cottage, collecting treasures along the way. John talked to them about his artwork and how he is inspired by the nature around him. John chose one of his paintings for the children to learn more about. He showed them step by step how he works on a painting and the children then recreated their own versions. The children listened to music as they made marks with pencils, charcoal, and paint.

Year 1- Andy Goldsworthy

Year 1 learnt about the work of Andy Goldsworthy. He is an English sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist who produces sculptures and land art situated in natural and urban settings. Year 1 explored some of his work and once again went out looking for natural objects that caught their eye. In groups they placed the natural materials to create some wonderful art pieces which were then photographed by the children.

Year 2- Cathy Taylor

Cathy Taylor is an English artist; she is an award-winning mixed media artist and popular workshop instructor. Her mixed media artwork is a celebration of the patterns, textures, and colour found in the environment. Year 2 learnt more about her artwork and went looking for leaves and flowers with interesting shapes and patterns. They did some rubbings, then went on to use these for print making. The children had to think about how they were to be displayed on paper to reflect a monoprint that Cathy made, ‘The Nature of Art.’

 Year 3- Belynda Henry

Belynda Henry is an Australian artist; inspired by abstract landscapes. She did a series of artwork with reflection of the landscape in water. Year 3 looked at some of her work and learnt more about her. They visited the village pond and did some sketching, looked at colours, shapes and the reflections in the pond.  They then went on to create their own reflection using paints they mixed and a used a folding technique to print the reflection.  

Year 4- Bernadette Twomey

Bernadette Twomey is an Australian artist. Her artwork features bold colours and abstract botanical shapes in different colour palettes. The children viewed a selection of her artwork to identify varied colour combinations and shapes used. They talked about the elements of art used and then used a word list to describe each one and draw the botanical shapes they noticed. They began by painting a background in chosen colours using watercolours and then drew botanical shapes with chalk and painted them in.

Year 5- Henri Matisse

Year 5 learnt about the famous French artist Henri Matisse. They focused on his stained-glass windows and his work at The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence. They learnt about his life, from his perseverance and overcoming physical obstacles to his range as an artist and innovative spirit. Year 5 looked for signs of nature in the stained glass and looked at the differences between organic and geometric shapes. They sketched their own window design and then used coloured cellophane and tissue paper to cut the shapes and display them as a stained-glass window.       
 
Year 6- Yayoi Kusama

Year 6 learnt about the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and her prolific art and obsession with dots. The children learnt more about her and her life growing up. They looked at some of her flower paintings that have a ‘net’ background and flowers. They went on to draw their own flowers- realistic or abstract, outlined with a fine liner, then coloured with markers or watercolours. The children then worked on the net background and cut out the flowers to stick on.

Cordelia Hampton-John and John Worth - Cas Holmes

Cordelia Hampton-John and John Worth worked with every child on a whole school piece of art based on the English artist Cas Holmes. She is a writer, lecturer and author. Cas has been working with textile art for many years and is known for the unique surfaces she creates with paint, dye, layers and stitch – techniques she cleverly combines with discarded cloth, paper and found materials. The children used recycled cotton, tore it and cut it. They used plants and flowers and hammered out the pigment creating beautiful prints.  Some children painted and others dyed cloth. The older children paired with the younger ones and worked amazingly well together. The work was displayed in the church room for the village fete and many members of the community saw the wonders of St.Mary’s artwork.

I would personally like to say a heartfelt thank you to John and Cordelia for welcoming us all to their beautiful home and giving up their precious time to work with us. I know the children loved visiting them, learnt something new and connected with nature themselves.

Gayle Lawrence Art and Design and Technology lead

 

St. Mary’s Church is blessed to have a close working relationship with St. Mary’s CofE primary school, and we’re in the school every week lending skills and expertise to enrich the experiences of pupils. We are fortunate to be able to draw in the help of talented individuals and local organisations to offer pupils more.  This year we forged a new collaboration between local artists, the school and the church to dovetail with St. Mary’s 2024 Church Appeal. Our aim was to capture the special experiences that students were getting to have in their parish church and give young people the chance to voice what they value about having a lively church in the heart of their community.  We couldn’t be more proud of the stunning, short film called “A Space to Be” that was commissioned with the help of the head of RE, Karen Porter, and produced by the photographer and painter John Worth, the poet Cordelia Hampton-John.

This was part of a large project culminating in our first Arts Week held this June.  John and Cordelia and the head of Art, Gayle Lawerence, offered a week of activities in the classroom and beyond, in studios and gardens, to inspire pupils to make, create and find new expression in the natural world and by learning techniques from artists.  This included hands on learning, delivered with the help of John and Cordelia, as well as talks about mark-making and music open to pupils, parents and members of the wider community. Work created during Arts week was displayed in St Mary’s Church Room during the Village Fete on June 9, alongside work by John and Cordelia, who generously donated the proceeds of works sold to aid St. Mary’s Church. The children’s art was also displayed in St. Mary’s CofE primary school. They really are of extra-ordinary quality.

We believe these collaborations strengthen not only our church school but also our whole community, and are enormously grateful to John, Cordelia, Karen and Gayle for the opportunity to partner. We can’t wait to see what new projects take shape in the year ahead.

Rachel E. Greene

June 25, 2024