Children's Art 1: The scribble years

Those who have seen After Maeve or planetcreature.com, know that I am passionate about children's art. For example, at one of Maeve's early birthday parties I showed a retrospective of Maeve's drawings during the pre-represententational years (the various stages of scribbling, as per Rhoda Kellogg*), which absolutely no-one appreciated.
Children's drawing development in its early stages follows a fairly universal pattern which reflects the organisation of the human mind and pysche. Those 'in the know' talk of the formation of the first circle as a more pivotal, defining moment in the development of the child than the celebrated 'first steps'.
The circle progresses to a mandala (combinations of circle and square or cross), variations on a circle eg with radiations, like a sun, and then becomes humanoid. Here I am showing the first humanoid mandala which I ever saw of Maeve's. It appeared in the middle of 1996 while I worked half-time in a very busy and chaotic general emergency department; I took it to work and stared at it from time to time as a source of wonder, delight and 'order' amidst the carnage. You can, once you think about it, recognise three central ? facial features (2 eyes and a nose?), and 4 ?limb appendages.
It is essential to understand as a core principle that early childhood drawings do not represent what children see. They represent how they conceive of the world. (One could argue, as Goethe did, that even as adults 'we see what we know', and therefore children are actually drawing what they see, but they do not perceive the world in a photographic or an objective fashion organised around perspective etc). In the child's completely unicentric view of the world, pictorial output is defined almost solely by the meaning of something in their mind, and in the toddler and young child, the primary meaning-space is occupied by the face and the enfolding body of the primary care-giver. In a later portrait of which a detail is shown on the planetcreature site, one recognises the experience of a central being inhabiting the leg-space of the central care-giver (as I see it, the symbolic containment of the experience is drawn, not necessarily Robyn's or Frank's actual legs).
I guess one of my missions in life is to help adults (parents and otherwise) to try to comprehend the experience of the child's mind, so that they can avoid creating unnecessary damage, through ignorance rather than malice, at early stages, particularly when the memory structures of the child's mind are pre-verbal and therefore less able to be easily accessed and cognitively manipulated.
One of the best ways to try to enter a young child's experience of the world is to sit with them as they draw, and to try to experience their pictures in a symbolic way. Kellog (who collected about a million drawings from children around the world) was fascinated even by such aspects as the different ways in which young children orient their scribbles in relation to the paper border, and described 9 or so different layout styles, which must relate to very early, probably universal, mental constructions of space. I have been intrigued to discover resonances with these core layouts in the compositions of the Great Masters, and, for example, the photographs of Ansel Adams.
Experiencing children's drawing does not exactly mean understanding what they mean: this is impossible, imprudent, disrespectful, and patronising (!!!)- although the more often you enter a child's world as co-observer, the more closely one can begin to sense the world as they see it. That means it is important not to ask what something IS, or to say what you think something might represent. A young child is not drawing rationally, they are drawing out of their inner sense of being, with the delight of creation, of making their mark on the world. You could as well ask them what their spontaneous dance IS or means.
Experiencing just means watching without judging, and where possible without intrusion, and simply observing, immersing yourself in their style of drawing (exuberant, concentrated etc), use of space, attention to detail, joy in their own production etc.
If you must interact, the technique I have settled upon is to 'sing' the drawing with them: to retrace with my hand the lines they have drawn with the sort of energy and focus I saw them use in different areas, echoing this focus and emotional rhythm with mouth noises like blowing or clicking.
Children crave attention, but the best attention we can give them is the sense of being felt, being comprehended, without judgement. Channelling their productions can come later, and as for modelling, well we are doing that by our own behaviour every minute.
*Rhoda Kellogg, Analysing Children's Art Mayfield Publishing, 1970

"After Maeve" web chat on SBS 9.30pm 21/9

After Maeve broadcasts on SBS tomorrow night. Thursday 21 September from 8.30 to 9.30 pm.
Afterwards, there will be a webchat on the SBS website which anyone can join from 9.30 to 10.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.
Go to http://www8.sbs.com.au/saforum/ and look for After Maeve at the top of the list of chats. You will need to login which should normally take only a minute or two.
However, Tim Bennet, the site administrator tells me that many people login and try to post messages immediately a program is concluded. So be patient. Maybe post your questions or comments ten or fifteen minutes after the discussion begins when the initial rush dies down.
Look forward to meeting you there.
Frank

Media on After Maeve in Australia

There are several articles about the film due to appear in the australian media. Melbourne Age today, 14 September. Sydney Morning Herald on 21 Sept., the morning of the sbs broadcast. Courier Mail, 20 September. West Australian, date unknown. Also there will be an interview with us on Radio National's Life Matters next Wednesday morning, 20th September.

Irish Broadcast of After Maeve

After Maeve aired in Ireland yesterday (12th Sept.). What a wonderful response we have had! Emails pouring in with warmest wishes from people who cried and laughed their way through the movie. Some viewers were flicking through the channels, found our documentary and were riveted to the screen. Others had carefully planned to watch, having seen the trailer. 22 percent of the Irish viewing public watched our film, about 230,000 people. We feel that our film is bringing into public awareness something new that strikes a chord with people in dealing with death and loss. We ourselves are not sure how to describe it. This quality is more a feeling that it elicits in people than an intellectual understanding. I am pretty much exhausted in a strangely satisfying way from the emotional response to the film. It seems to penetrate my body and move through me infusing me with a feeling of energy quietly buzzing. So many people have sent their good wishes that perhaps I am simply feeling that energy directly.

Robyn at Home

  

Disappearing into Grief

Where is it that we go after someone dies? The people you meet often seem to think that you, the bereaved, have disappeared into some black hole. In there, all is darkness, misery and depression. After a period of months or years, you come back, all your grieving done, to take
your place once again in the land of the living, that is, in everyday life.
I agree that some people seem to be consumed by that dark star in total grief. But I suspect that for most, the experience entails a range of feeling and experience, some highs and inevitable lows.
In a conversation yesterday with a friend whose son died from cancer about ten years ago aged twentyone, he and I agreed on this. He said:

Life goes on. Happy events and everyday events
are mingled in with the sadness

.
In my case, some of the richest experiences of my life came during the first months after Maeve died. In the film, the moment when I place by the pond the box containing Maeve's ashes, I pause for a minute or two. The air is filled with silence and the attentive awareness of the adults and children. I feel then a moment of deepest peace in myself, something I might describe as a spiritual experience or at least, something close to a spiritual eperience.
In the first week after Maeve died, gathered with Robyn's and my family at Alexandra Headlands while waiting for the autopsy, we shared a deep sense of closeness and mutual support. We laughed as well as cried, remembering stories about Maeve and other times we had shared. Pluto, the lord of death, is also the lord of riches. Within the grief, we found riches in ourselves and in one another.

Kid's Qs from the Australian Film Launch

KQ1: How did you get Maeve's drawings to come off the page [of her notebooks and fly away?] (R. aged 8)
A: If you continue to work really hard on your doodles instead of doing your other work, then you too could grow up and get a job working at Mt Coot-tha like our animators, drawing dragons [and making kid's drawings come to life]

KQ2: Where can you buy the video? (M. aged 13)
A: Google "After Maeve". Its Marcom or something. [It isn't out yet but you can pre-order].

KQ3: Was it hard for the crew to be involved in such a sad story? (S aged 12)
A: Yes it was. Our main photographer, Danny [Philips], who was part of our family for that first year, deserves enormous credit for his sensitivity and courage. Our wonderful editor, [Rebecca Murphy], turned the job down two times before she finally accepted it, because she thought it would be too distressing. Several of our sound recordists cried with us. But every person working with the film found the overall experience uplifting. The [good food and] whiskey at Robyn and Frank's house helped.

KQ4: Ah.. Um.. I forgot (R. aged 8)

KQ5: How do you find Maeve's Birthday now? (G. aged 12)
A: Well, this year it was a bit hard, it was a bit sad. I have to acknowledged Zoe here, Zoe was Maeve's twin cousin, she was born on exactly the same day as Maeve, and it used to be they had their birthdays together, and now Zoe has her birthday all to herself, but also, it always contains a little bit of the sadness of losing Maeve...

KQ6: I remembered my question now: How did you make Maeve come alive again? (R, aged 8)
A: I beg your pardon?
R: I mean, first Maeve was dead, and then she was alive again, and [then she was gone, and then she was alive in the cottage again and then she was running around the field and then you were crying again...]
A: Its our clever [director and editor and] animators again. [Jan wanted to film us in exactly the same places we had been with Maeve, to show how Maeve, and the absence of Maeve, were still present with us in all those places. First she showed our old videos from our last trip with Maeve, and then she blended in footage that had been carefully matched on our trip with the crew last year, when she looked at the old photos and videos on a laptop and made us stand here or there to match it, like when we were going out the gate and Maeve was sitting on it and then she disappeared like the Cheshire-Cat. Then also the animators drew pictures of Maeve and put her on the dragon, because that's how we would like to imagine her... So our special places hold the past as well as the present and the future...memory and sensation and dream all intermingled... ]

KQ7: Do you see anything of Maeve in Tara? (M aged 13)
A: Great question. Yes, .... among many other deeper things, look who has the 'thick hair' now...

KQ8: Are there any sushi left? (E, aged 11)
A: No. You kids ate them all.

What Helps 4: Counselling

Professional counselling may not always be necessary in the grieving process. In some cases, it might be necessary where, for example, a current grief situation brings up issues or traumatic feelings from the past. In either case, the skills and focussed attention of a counsellor or a therapist will almost certainly help to ease the journey. A few weeks after Maeve died, I was scheduled to facilitate a group therapy residential weekend in the imagery process that is the main type of counselling I offer. It was clear that I would need more attention and care than probably anyone else who might attend the workshop. Instead of cancelling the workshop, I asked a friend and colleague, Monica Sharwood, to facilitate the weekend. We reorganised it so that it now became a weekend geared towards supporting Robyn, Tara and myself. About twenty of us gathered at Camp Bornhoffen, high in the Numinbah Valley, inland from Quensland's Gold Coast. We shared stories of loved ones departed, we explored our inner worlds through imagery journeys, we ate good food, sang, went for walks and generally took time away from ordinary life to honour the huge transition in our lives that the death of Maeve entailed. We made space in our lives so that inner adjustments could take place. This contrasts to some extent with the approach that says one should get back into life as quickly as possible and get on with it. But that approach feels like a denial of inner changes that need space. In reality, grief was my life at that time. Spending a weekend honouring it was probably one of the best things I could have done at that time.
Everyone who attended left feeling greatly enriched by the experience.

What helps 3: Not Talking At All

 Find your local Quaker meeting or a meditation group and sit still in silence for an hour. If you prefer, spend some time by yourself in nature. I came across a quote some time ago that said: "All the trouble in the world comes from a man not being able to sit alone with himself in a room." The other side is that, if you can sit quietly with yourself or with others, tremendous good can come from it. What good? Try it a few times to find out. For you, it might be different. 
For me, I begin to feel more at home in myself. Difficulties do not disappear but I feel more solid and competent towards them.