Painting in Action: Painting with Force and Motion

Recently I ran a residency with Ms. Lawson’s and Ms. Zemar’s first graders at John Dewey Elementary School. Together we learned about force and motion by combining primary colors into secondary colors to create different forms of action painting. Action painting is not a common vocabulary term for your average 6 year old.

Over five weekly sessions, we dove into several unique and immersive action painting activities focused on spontaneous mark making based on the energy and movement of every artist. Every student participated by creating their own paintings as well as by playing various memory games to remember steps and expectations. To further reinforce students’ understanding of push and pull, one class even participated in a motion and movement exercise with our dance instructor, Amy Notley .

We had a blast mixing, pouring, racing, pushing, pulling, and throwing paint throughout our five weeks together. Everyone created beautiful and dramatic artwork. The class dynamic was a bit of an uphill climb in the first few sessions. It took a little time to learn how to best keep the students engaged and following the rules. After a few adjustments, and a few jokes, no teachers were painted during this residency. Students? That’s a whole different story.