Erasmus + Art Project

Following the insightful Teacher Training Course ‘Teaching and Leaning through Art: Theory and Practice’, which was held in Venice last February, the skills learnt were delivered in a cross-curricular exercise between the departments of Art, English and Drama.

 

During Art lessons, the theme of The Sea was implemented with the Senior 3 students. Students were introduced to the topic in both a visual, and auditory way, by viewing images of paintings by local and foreign artists (‘The Great Wave off Kanazawa’ by Hokusai, 1831, ‘Heavy Sea in Etretat’ by Claude Monet, 1869, ‘Cypress Coast’ by Erin Hanson, 2020, and ‘When the Sky Sings’ by Debbie Bonello, 2020) and by listening to, and reading, two poems which describe the sea while at a calm stage, and a stormy stage (‘The Sea’ by James Reeves, and ‘Seaside’ by Erin Hanson).

The students used the images of the paintings to observe the brushstrokes used by the artists, which was a reflection of the kind of scene it portrayed. The students were then introduced to Sonia Delaunay’s ‘Prose on the Trans-Siberian Railway and of Little Jehanne of France’ from 1913, which is a fusion of poetry and painting. They used this as inspiration for their own work on the theme of The Sea, after being divided into two groups, and tackling the calm and stormy sea based on the poem assigned.

The result of this group-work were two large painting-poem hybrids which illustrate each poem, using their interpreting and painting skills following a discourse of the poems and the ways of the sea.

Ms Alison Portelli Shaw

Art Teacher