Getting your hands dirty is part of the fun for young artistic minds. ?Photos Provided to China Daily

Organizer says art promotes problem solving, expression

The kids at Beijing Color Studio have been spicing up their summer using a bit of creativity and a few bright splashes of paint.

A refreshing contrast from books, spiral notebooks and multiplication tables, the kids here, instructed by British expat Nina Griffee, can coat their paintbrushes using a new form of self-expression that not only enhances the aesthetics of an initially blank canvas but also enriches their personal development as well.

Kids get busy at the Beijing Color Studio.

The Beijing Color Studio was started by long-term Beijing expat Karen Patterson and this summer, due to popular demand, children can try their hand at painting at the studio's art camp. Her aim, she said, is to provide an extra curricular activity the kids can enjoy in a supportive environment vacant of usual expectations of academic performance or grades.

According to Patterson, letting the kids enjoy themselves in the summer camps is certainly a big part of it, but there is a deeper element to using art as a creative outlet.

"It adds another dimension to in other areas in life as well as in classes or even other subjects," she said. "Because it requires alternate ways of thinking and an open mind."

Actively making brush strokes on a blank canvas, choosing color composition and texture helps in problem-solving techniques, but not in the logical problem solving sense one would apply to science or math. Instead, Patterson indicates that these decisions teach children how to apply a creative solution using the only resources they have available to them.

Griffee, who leads these art camps at the studio, said her familiarity with the positive benefits of art for self-expression originated while working in her hometown of Bristol at a contemporary art studio called Spike Island. One program used art as a way to emotionally rehabilitate people who had suffered various traumatic experiences. In creating artistic images to express emotion, Griffee said the methodical brush strokes help to release feelings inside.

The approach Griffee and Patterson offer at the camp allows children to put their feelings and ideas onto a blank canvas in a positive way. In addition, using new themes each week, such as monsters or clowns, entertains and motivates children to create images to which they aren't usually accustomed and teaches flexibility.

"The theme this week has been pirates," explained New Yorker Zayd Dohrn, whose five-year-old daughter Dalin has been attending the camp while the family spends the summer in Beijing.

A palette filled with imagination.

"They had to line up their canvases and everybody had to paint a pirate ship that was fighting the other ships on either side," Dohrn said. "Not only were the paintings fun for the kids to do, but the paintings were also interacting together in an interesting way. The kids had even painted cannon balls flying into the other people's paintings."

Dohrn said he encourages Dalin's interest in painting and sculpture and greatly values this form of expression. Rarely, he noted, do children get an opportunity like this to be in an adult art studio for hours at a time, led by an inspiring teacher.

For young children taking part in the camp, it's also a boost in confidence and self esteem through social interaction at the camp. Parents like Wesley Stonehouse from Australia, whose daughter Asha is attending the camp for a few weeks, feel it's advantageous for their children to mingle in a multicultural, multilingual environment.

Typically, six-year-old Asha, who attends school locally in Beijing, is a little bit shy, Stonehouse said, but this camp has emboldened her to be freer to instigate conversations, letting her "really come out of herself" and be much more outgoing.

Art camps like this help children in all kinds of ways, suggested Dalin's mother, Rachel DeWoskin. "Frankly, I think it makes them more articulate, more able to express thoughts and it makes them more aware of the world. All of a sudden, Dalin has been talking about Chinese buildings," she said, never imagining her five-year-old could be interested in Beijing's famous CCTV tower.

Beijing Color Studio aims to provide an art camp that is fun, but with something a bit deeper. The multinational atmosphere of taking these kinds of classes in China's capital can't help but broaden a child's perspective.

The children might be busy gleefully smearing their hands in wet paint and messy fun, but the positive implications that art provides offer more than spattered paint on their rosy cheeks - their paint stained clothing is somehow implicit of the skills they will be taking away.

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