in the ideolect of a child

He strides through the grass
armed with only a "Secret Agent Bug Pouch",
allthewhile singing,

"Where are those sneaky ladybugs?"

Liam (age 3.9 years) has made
three small pictures (a ladybug,
a butterfly and a mosquito) on
coloured scratchboard. He folds
each drawing in half and glues
all three together so that they
open like a book, an insect
identification book, that he
slides into a small plastic
pocket. It fits easily into
his left pantleg pocket.

He has literally scratched the
surface to reach "the hiding
colours underneath". His
artistic process is alot like
finding bugs, or as he says,
scratching pictures reminds
him that "bugs can hide under
leaves and rocks".

Art is a material language
and each physical material
offers particular properties
that facilitate unique kinds
of expressions. What can be
said with clay can't be
translated into paint.
It follows that the more
languages children have,
the more expressions of
the same idea they will
discover.

To express the world with
a broader palette; why stop
at the first impression when
there are many different ways
of stating the same idea. It
is that skill of defamiliarizing
one's perceptions of the world.
Otherwise, habitual sameness
entrenches us. Art is the
undilution of habit.

"The Russian Formalists had a word for it.",
said Morris.

I'm sure they did.", said Philip. "But it's
no use telling me what it was, because I'm
sure to forget it."

"Ostranenie," said Morris. "Defamiliarization.
It was why they thought literature was all
about. 'Habit devours objects, clothes,
furniture, one's wife and fear of war ...
Art exists to help us recover the sensation
of life'. Viktor Shklovky."

(Lodge, 1991)