Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian

Chrysanthemum

circa 1908-09

     It is like a head of tossled hair, maybe a little boy's, whose curls run off in as many odd and weird directions as does his imagination. Can one really see the face of a child, of whomever a child will grow up to be? Not really. The face of this little boy is therefore obscured. He is lost in tangles of things that, only at this age, he can enjoy without the burden of knowing what they actually mean, or what damage or joy they would bring to his adult life. Laughing them away as mere thoughts, as ideas that he will probably be indifferent to after a minute or two, are a child's remedy to passing time. In and out of holes created by an immature mind gives children the glazed look of serenity. A sudden silence or an outburst of energy seems only childish to grown-ups, but with the amount children do not understand and yet see and feel at the same time, their 'childish' behaviour is actually surprisingly subdued. 
     If we, the so-called ''adults'', place our adult minds in that of a child we would explode. The pressures a child takes without realising - those that grown-ups normally experience, dissolve into or even over-analyse to points of depression or comfort or instability - weigh down and test prematurely the child's strengths. These pressures mould us from day one, whether we know it or not. Like buds we bloom but never truly re-bloom; we stretch ourselves slowly outwards, unable to really stop or revisit a fetal position of safety, until, as elderly people, we soon find ourselves fully splayed and naked to world, about to leave it. Like this Chrysanthemem we try to hold our heads high to the end, but in truth every one of us is the same child with tossled hair - observing, looking, but lacking any clue as to what is really going on in the world we see.

Rik Wouters

Rik Wouters

Baby with Blue Cap

circa 1911

     With its eyes slightly enlarged and its posture a bit too straight, Wouters is able to animate a two-dimensional pastel portrait with a touch of real childish 'bounce'. Clouded in a puffy garment of light pinks and many blues, topped with an over-sized blue-bell knit hat and anchored to the spot in front of a wave of quivering wallpaper the child sits attentively. Like a flower stalk its feeds off of the sunlight; off of whatever is the most interesting thing in the room. It cranes its head here and there, stopping at this point to observe whatever muse the artist placed to its left to keep it transfixed for a long enough time. We can see the hasty stick-work, the spots where Wouters scrubbed the raw chunk of pastel (or pigmented chalk?) onto the canvas, leaving a rough rectangular imprint to make up for the child's creased sleeve or pattern, or for its little hands and chin.

     It is interesting to think that their roles - that of the artist and of the sitter - are reversed in this situation. Babies are often erratic and tempermental but in this case, while the child was caught in a moment of stillness, it was actually Wouters who was apparently stung by a burst of energy. His hand work varies dramatically across the portrait (compare the rough blue backdrop to the baby's flesh) and in some areas he even neglected to finish details. His attention, like the baby's, was clearly drawn to one point. For both it was a moment of interest, but it is probably for only one that this moment was remembered later in life.

Levi Pinfold

Levi Pinfold

Illustration for Black Dog (children's book)

circa 2011

     We look up into the scene, like a child having just entered the room. We sense sudden movement, then colour and noise. Taking in the grandeur of the space for the first time we see that the man is statuesque, solid. He is the dependent trigger, the battery responsible for the life of this indoor event. He holds onto the air, onto the moment, by the way he tenses each of his fingers. What is out there?, he questions.

     Everything else assumes a slow motion. The toast slides lower off its falling plate, about to meet the same fate as its other now milk-sodden half; in turn, the droplets of milk slowly patter up into the cat's face, startled and scoffing; the maroon cushioned stool plummets calmly into nothingness, about to clunk harmlessly against the painted wooden floor boards; at this clunk the second cat will finally leap from the sill, out from under the child's protective hand which kept it in a perilous perch; the whoosh! of air created by its light leap with agitate the papers on the floor (maybe the red crayon will roll closer the yellow one), causing them to hover lazily before they return to their spots, only a little to the left; and finally, the narrative turns to us. We make the next move. Slowly, as of this first page, we are meant to help set in motion the following scenes, to embark on a journey to find what caused the man to jump so quickly. The artist brilliantly hooks his audience with the powers of perspective and motion, drawing us into his world through a simulated fish-eye lense - making us feel small, curious. Making us return to a childish mind-frame of, What next? And all without a word.