4A’s theme, Free to Be Me, gave the children the opportunity to explore their own identity, their hopes and fears and was inspired by the poetry of Maya Angelou.

We first revisited how to paint a portrait drawing faces in proportion, sketching detail and mixing skin colour tints and tones to remember how each of is unique. It was fascinating to explore how different artists use portraits to portray not just appearance but also personality, experiences, likes and dislikes. We were inspired by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat who was a young street artist who used bright bold coloured backgrounds in the background and often featured both the ‘inside’ anatomical features in his portraits as well as the outside.

Creating our own self portraits in this way allowed us let go of any ideas what was right and wrong in painting and to expressive ourselves in a fun and creative way.

Jean-Michel Basquiat illustrated Maya Angelou’s poem ‘Life Don’t Frighten Me’ which became the inspiration for our own kennings and art outcome. We chose acrylic paint colours and bold brush strokes to represent fear and our figures showed bravery and resilience. We loved combining layers of paint and chalk pens in a graffiti style.

And Still I Rise showed Maya Angelou’s resilience and defiance in the face of adversity and we captured this powerfully in our own performance poem showcased at our Arts Fortnight celebration. Our bird mobiles individually captured our unique spirit and interests and flying high together showed the power of our team to flourish.

4A’s Arts Fortnight