Kids should go to art galleries. Full stop.

Kids! In you go!

The Reina Sofia in Madrid is one formidable modern art gallery, and in Grit's opinion, if you have kids, unmissable.

I don't know if you avoid taking your kids to art galleries. Perhaps you fret about what other people will say, or worry about the reaction of the art guards, or get anxious about whether your kids will scream, run about, then throw themselves on the floor if you show them a Picabia.

All I want to say is screw that. All kids belong in art galleries. No negotiation. Art is our culture, our past, our future. It belongs to our kids as much as to us. And if they stand in that gallery and yell out their guts, then shrug your shoulders, and call it art.

I should warn you, I have one big attitude problem about this. In some places I have thrown Shark, Squirrel and Tiger into those hallowed halls like a hand grenade. Chuck them in the middle of the Hockney and you can see the bomb blast of moral outrage taking place in slow motion all about you.

The indignation, I bet, is mostly from the child free who think they are the only rightful people who should be allowed to look at art. Spare me.

I have been very judgmental about those women in particular who look like high-class hookers clippyclopping Jimmy Choos through the holy house of art. The same women who, sighting a living breathing child just about to curdle the air with a yellow lungfull of howl, recoil with the type of disgust you would reserve for the smell of an eviscerated rat held over a bunsen burner.

Bad luck, ladies. Art is ours. Art galleries have been our legitimate life and stomping ground since dot. Believe me; me and the gritlets, we are not going away.

I have been very particular about this since I turned that pram sideways to get it through the door of the local art gallery.

And I get worse.

I do not even like kids to be quiet in art galleries. I do not like reverence and hushed voices. What is this place? A church? Nope. No way.

I have taught Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to march straight in there, own that space and place, stand still and be surrounded by all the art they wish; to point, shout mummmmeeeee! loookatthiiiiis! Then, if they hate something, I want them to tell me, strong and loud. And if they like something, I've taught them to lie on the floor, whip out crayons and a sketch pad, copy that idea, and take it home to see if they can model the like.

And do I care about the afflicted souls and morally wounded in our wake? Not at all. Get over it.

If I could get past security, I would make it so every parent can bring in orange squash and blankets, and set up squat in the middle of the floor and sit there, discussing whether vinegar on emulsion would have the same effect, then whip out a roll of wall paper and give that idea a go.

Nothing you say will dent me. I congratulate myself for that art is ours attitude. Because I believe it's thanks to that way-of-life education, now I have three kids who can spend five hours in the Renia Sofia, doing this.






Success.

Take your kids to art galleries. I want to see them there.

My children have done this

Last year I saw the entries for the Turner Prize on display at Tate Britain.

A model sitting on a toilet wasn't quite enough to prompt me to action.

After all, I'm beyond bored with Brit art and the like. Corpses hanging from trees, people with penises growing from their faces, a pile of soil, a heap of bricks, celery, tin foil... a squatting dummy seems rather tame.

It wasn't that which prompted Grit to shift herself from her chair. No.

It was a passing comment by a Dior-clad uber tart in a London art gallery who, dripping perfumed couture and diamonds in front of a pool of yellow paint splashed over a bedsheet, declared loudly, 'It really annoys me when people say "My child could have done that!"'

That was it.

Each month, nine-year olds Squirrel, Shark and Tiger worked a day with me on this project. First we visited Whipsnade wildlife animal park, taking observational sketches. Next we looked at the work of painters listed here. Then we studied colour, form, composition, line. We converted a bathroom to a studio. There, we tried all styles of brushstroke. We worked with different qualities of acrylic. We mixed, matched, blended, sketched, considered, talked, painted, cried, laughed. Then I marched to the local community art space, booked the space for two weeks, Dig made the posters, and we spent Sunday putting up the art.

And this is my children's exhibition. It's called HIDE! If you can't come along, here are the paintings on the walls.











And here is a little of the behind-the-scenes work.




Uber tart, My children did that.

Next we might slice off our ears

One big reason we home educate is ART.

Readers of this blog know we abuse our children with art. We have been abusing them regularly now. For years. We're going to continue. And we're continuing a bit quicker right now thanks to the exhibition of the acrylic on canvas that Tiger, Shark and Squirrel love to do so much of and which starts on June 14.

June 14?

OHMYGODWEHAVEONLYTWOWEEKSTIGERSHARKANDSQUIRRELBLOODYHURRYUP!

Art. Really.

I have found a cheap supplier of canvas. It is the local tip, which charges me one pound per canvas. Usually the canvas is already painted with a terrible landscape or someone's cat or abstract patterns which remind me of sick. We immediately emulsion it over, hoping it wasn't really by Rembrandt, then the little grits get stuck in and thrash around in the bathroom with acrylic paint while I intermittently weep and shout.

Here's the update. And apologies to the artists if I've hung them here the wrong way round.





You can guess who painted the fish.

Work in progress

The Mose by Squirrel.
(Yes, I will attend to that spelling.)

Fish by Shark.
(Shark, they cannot all be called Fish.)

Hog of Doom by Tiger.
(Let's talk about that title, Tiger.)

Plan for art

Sundays are planning days chez Grit, and for lack of any other plan, I drive the gritlets to Whipsnade. Once here I declare we will plan art for the gritlet exhibition next year.

And there is a plan for this exhibition too, somewhere. I just have to remember what it is, and put it back on track. I know this type of disciplined forward thinking to create a product might go against all the grain for autonomous, spontaneous learning, but please bear in mind we are now dealing with the Grit life/death balance, so go easy on me.

Planning for this exhibition is Grit's antidote to the millions of bits of artwork hourly produced here at the Pile by the triplet art factory, and the output is one in which poor dumb Grit drowns, routinely.

In fact I will argue that this project is also educational because it is an attempt to encourage the gritlets to tackle a long-term goal in a steady, thoughtful manner. Consider too that it takes a special kind of gritty vigilance to actually maintain this plan for more than fifteen seconds and to negotiate it over a lengthy period of time with three little gritlets who'd like to think they can get away with scribbling out a horse hoof in yellow wax crayon and considering the entire project done and dusted.

What's more, come the exhibition, I've suggested to the gritlets that next June we could try and flog the art and turn the enterprise into a business project. In case you are appalled, I can say Shark is totally enthused by this idea of making a few quid and has already turned out three paintings which she says should pay for a laptop. In fact if she carries on with this enthusiasm I might just get cheeky and contact Saatchi.

Anyway, Shark wants to paint a picture of a seal underwater, and her first step is to snap away 120 pictures on Grit's phone camera until it and the seal both squeal.

Shark's next step will be to draw and draw, while misguided Grit hovers about, muttering unhelpful stuff like compositioncolourlineshaperhythm which possibly just gets in everyone's way.

Next, Shark has to put up with Grit being a right little madam because Grit won't let go of the acrylic paints and paintbrushes until Shark has selected one sketch and redrawn that sketch using lots of different colours, reaching a finished piece that she is 110% happy to reproduce on canvas.

Only then will Grit let go of the paint and paintbrushes, and work can begin in the studio (aka the downstairs bathroom with the canvas propped up on a stepladder).

And here's stage one of Shark's new piece, which we call research.





And so you can see the process in action, and the carefully planned stages of this forward thinking project, I'll post pictures of stage two. If I remember.

Why home educate? (5) Creativity

It's raining. It's raining in bucketfuls, and no-one is interested in attending the fungi spotting wood walk this morning. Mostly because we will be swimming up to our eyeballs in mud while being stabbed in the head by spears of rain and thus unable to distinguish a fungi even when we have crushed it by accident.

So we do what a productive home educating family does. We start work on the various pieces of art that will compose the exhibition that mother, bored and pissed off by a Turner model on a toilet, has rashly announced we will create for next summer down the local community hall.

Well the gritlets are thoroughly enjoying themselves with this project, even though it means the bathroom has been reassembled as an artist's studio for the duration. I have propped up a step ladder over the bath and this serves as an easel. The bathroom shelf stands as a paint store and the paintbrushes can be conveniently ejected into the sink.

This project is going well, except I didn't get my choice of theme so am a bit sulky about that. I wanted rock, on the basis that rocks do not run away. The gritlets wanted animals, including lions, horses, fish and cheetahs, and they won. So we have visited Whipsnade safari park to collect preparatory drawings; we have brought those drawings home and looked at patterns, cropping and colour; we have looked at various art styles from our collection of art books, mostly gathered from second-hand charity shops and the library sale, and we are now committing ourselves to canvas, acquired fairly cheaply down the discount tat shop in a nearby town.

Here we go.


Art art art. This is one of the biggest reasons why I home educate, if not the biggest, most important, and dearest to my heart. I have seen art, craft, dance, music, drama, play, imagination and creativity, all steadily removed from the primary curriculum. That is a loss to children; that is a loss to all our lives. And I know I am not a lone voice in the wilderness shouting that one.

But complaining in a staff room didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Marching right in, taking control to put a creative education in place, changing a state of mind from consumer to producer, imagining ourselves doing, learning for ourselves, and getting out the paints. That's creative.