» How it all started

Written by Annie Hamman.

Tallulah often ventured into my studio, crawling, then walking in, and stood by the easel, nose just touching the bottom edge of my canvas, sometimes lifting a hand up and gently touching the texture of acrylics. “I want…” she would say and look at me with that intense look of “why not?”. Indeed, why not? – I thought one day, laid down large white canvas, put several trays of colourful paint on the floor, sat her down and gave her a brush. I thought to myself: if she spoils it, I’ll just paint my thing over it. Far from spoiling, her art ended up being better than mine, well, from my opinion. What better art, then expressive, fearless art? She dove in without reservation, not asking me for anything, just feeling comfortable with expressing herself and exploring new sensations. She painted on the canvas with a brush, then with her hands, feet and finally with her body. Her most cute art technique must be the butterfly on the canvas, like people do it on the sand. I creates that smudgy wings effect, but with the paint instead of sand. It was interesting to observe how she spend long moments just feeling the brush dipped in paint, between her fingers, contemplating the texture of the paint it’s structure and temperature. Tactile discoveries in saturated color – it must be incredible feeling at that age, and has to be of great benefit for child’s brain development. I must say, despite of my concern, she never tried to eat the paint or put the brush in her mouth. Although her face, and even hair were often covered in acrylics. It is surprisingly easy to wash acrylics off the body with warm water and soap, body has natural oil layer that slightly repels acrylic, so the dreadful feeling of “dirty baby” left me soon enough. Benefits are far greater than this minor inconvenience.