Inspiration: Steven Kenny

 I am with the artist Steven Kenny (click on his name to be taken to his website) at the opening of his exhibit at The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art. 

(The hat I have on is 'cause the opening included a costume contest.)

The inspiration pieces by Steven Kenny, that I shared with my students as we began our paintings.

 

                                            The Arrival                               After the Flood

For several years now I have been taking my 4th graders to The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art. As part of this field trip, they get to see their work displayed. Which is very exciting! Click HERE to see how it all started! Just in case you would like to display your student's work in a museum.

As I prepare for this event, I check out what will be on exhibit at the museum to inspire my students so that their project will relate to what they will be seeing.

The first time I saw the painting The Arrival by Steven Kenny something just clicked! Maybe because I'm from the north and I now live in Florida. But I absolutely love that painting. And with a little research I found his painting After the Flood, which again makes me think of Florida. I was really excited to see that Steven Kenny's work would be on display when I took my students to the museum.j

 

                                                   (student work)

After showing my students the inspiration paintings, I modeled how to use the paint to create an outdoor scene. I demonstrated a beach background, however I told my students it just needed to be outside. At the time it was winter in Florida and an art teacher friend of mine up north wanted me to do an exchange with her and her students. They would do a winter scene up north and I would do one in the south. Basically to show how different our winters are. The Arrival was the perfect way to start the conversation.

 

I wanted my students to paint their backgrounds without any interference and not to worry about what they would place in their paintings.

 

The following week we practiced drawing figures with manikins and students drew what they wanted in their paintings on a separate piece of paper. They colored with markers and colored pencils. Then they cut out their figures and anything else they wanted to add and glued it to their paper. I showed them how to blend in what they had glued down as some couldn't quite cut out small areas.

Check out how wonderful they came out!

 

The Student Expressions Wall

Students checking out their art work

Soooo in the event you have clicked on the artists name and noticed how some of his art may not be appropriate for elementary students.......... I did include that information on the permission slips and did keep the children away from some of the more graphic paintings........ sigh.

We all had a wonderful time at the museum and now I'm gonna start planning for next years trip!

Thanks for Reading!