Uncrumple That Drawing!
Rhoda Kellogg and the Misunderstanding of Child Art

From the first time she observed very young children joyfully making scribbles, Rhoda Kellogg knew that humans are born with a natural capacity for making art. Where others saw meaningless marks, Rhoda saw whole, complete and beautiful compositions. “No child need fail to develop in art if teachers can learn to appreciate the gestalts of scribblings. Only free scribbling and drawing become work that is integrated in each individual’s mind.”

So important are these earliest stages of visual communication that she spent over 60 years dedicated to the empirical demonstration that all humans are born with this innate artistic capacity. Art is in our biology.

Her classroom practices were founded on the premise that children teach themselves in art. “Creative expression must always be motivated from within, not without.” She asserted that the neuromuscular processes exercised during free, self-directed early scribbling foster not only aesthetics, but the hand-eye-brain systems needed for language, literacy and self-esteem.