Just been putting a few books together to take down to Canberra tomorrow. One of them is this beautiful hardback book. Greer uses the books in the FIVE IN A ROW fashion ie reading one book for a week and doing various craft projects, geography, language, art etc with her girls.
The artwork in this particular book is just gorgeous and I thought it worth putting up some of the illustrator's thoughts on her mother's encouragement in her early art endeavours.
"...My mother's favorite thing to do was simply to walk outside and look. She was a painter, and my first painting lessons came from her. They were really lessons in looking. She would ask me: What is the color of the tree shadow? Is it blue? Blue green? Violet? and what is the shape of the highlight on the copper teakettle? Oval? Square? Diamond? She was teaching me to paint what I saw, not what I knew. What I knew could never be enough."
