REFLECTIONS ON
TEACHING ART
B
ack when I took art for School Certificate, (after fighting with everyone in authority except my supportive mother to be allowed to move from the academic stream to do so) I spent the year learning how to produce a piece of work in a formal three-hour examination.
We practised figure drawing, placed in different surroundings, and studied still life in all its iterations. We sat two papers; the first required the candidate to illustrate something along the lines of: “Ah, curried sausages,” he exclaimed as he lifted the lid of the pot, or He raised the lantern high to reveal… The second paper asked for a design for a menu cover or a book jacket. I still remember my idea for my menu cover for a fish restaurant – two fish on a plate using their knife and fork as oars to escape their fate. I spent ages on their very human desperate expressions. I also remember I did not get a top mark as my sense of humour overtook the requirement to come up with an 30
DIO TODAY
appropriate design! Of course, we had to learn how to do lettering by hand (and a ruler) and you definitely learnt how to space the letters or you ran out of room and had to start again. We did not have any art subjects at Year 12 and the Fine Arts Preliminary Examination was six folio panels and two subjects on the timetable.
By the time I arrived at Diocesan, art education had already come a long way and was seen as a very important part of the curriculum. Students took art for University Entrance and if they were not accredited, their work was sent away for examination. It was all very stressful, both as a student and for the teacher. My first and only Year 13 student studying for the Fine Arts Preliminary Examination at Diocesan in 1984 was Niki Caro. Now we have classes in painting, printmaking, design, photography and art history. We also have the International Baccalaureate Diploma in the Visual Arts, a two-year course that
is inclusive of all the art fields. Working from the artist model as a teaching approach began in the 1980s and at first it was taken up quite literally. Students were heard to say they were ‘doing Matisse or Picasso’ or they were directed to copy a work to study the making process. Students ‘mastered the Masters’ and developed their technical vocabulary, however, their ideas were so often an emulation of the style and not a synthesis of their understanding of conventions and ideas. I made ‘a van Gogh’ at art school. At a certain point the small reproduction I was working from was taken away by my tutor and I had to finish it on my own. I gave it to my mother and she had it in pride of place on the wall in her formal lounge. I did refuse to sign it, despite pleas from my mother – what would I sign it as? Shelley Van Gogh? I acknowledge the benefit I gained and the deeper understanding and real appreciation of the artist’s method and approach from this exercise, however, time constraints make this
