DATE: 14/5/2018 | News
Sophia Koukourli, Art Psychotherapist
The Art Exhibition of the students of the 1st Primary School of Tinos under the title “My World's Image”, was successfully completed at the Cultural Foundation of Tinos on 12/5/2018.
The works of art of the students were completed in the context of the project “Art as Therapy” that was organized by the Parents Association in cooperation with the Art Therapist Sophia Koukourli.
Art is to children their way of saying ‘thank you’, ’I love you’ or ‘I miss you’. Painting as a language of communication allows them to freely express themselves and in deciphering it ‘Art as Therapy’ helps us.
We witnessed an art exhibition where the works of art were created by the students’ hands and hearts alike.
They painted by plunging their hands and brushes into the colors, they wrote their signature at an end of the paper, they gave titles and were happy to share their experience.
The free expression of the children’s feelings through their involvement with painting led them to discover the magic or art. ’Art as Therapy’ offered the place and the wat of expression through creativity. Students learned to choose, create, act, change their decisions, experiment.
The moments that they were creating, they transformed the world around them. One painting could trigger a conversation. Even when they drew a squiggle or left a colored finger mark on the paper, the work of art had an emotional significance for allowing them to express happiness, anger, grief.
Children discovered their world in view of every new challenge with spontaneity and strength. Through this process they gained “access to their emotionalism and their inner behavior” as is characteristically reported by Françoise Dolto*. Every child reproduced on the paper the emotions and the impressions as those were felt by the very same child in their own inner, fragile world.
By asking them to draw an ‘imaginary family’, children are driven to project on the piece of paper, experiences that they had within their families, real or imaginary.
Children’s paintings are a limitless source of information about their feeling, dreams and difficulties. Their work of art that was created by their hands took us on a journey full of colors, imagination and beauty coming straight from their hearts!
*Françoise Dolto, (1908-1988), was a French pediatrician and psychoanalyst. She is considered to be one of the most prominent figures of the French School of Psychoanalysis especially contributing to the field of Children’s Psychoanalysis.
“Knowing thyself” (gnothi sauton) is the actual getting to knowing ourselves. Its true essence lies in caring for the soul, self-awareness, awareness of our skills, abilities and potential. It helps us understand the way we could act in order to gain the real self-awareness.
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