Mary-Ann Ridgway

The transformative power of 'The Play of Painting'.

The ’Play of Paining’ (A pedagogy developed by Arno Stern).

“A place sheltering the person from pressure and outside influence.”

A place in which “self-affirmation and relationships with others is in a perfect equilibrium that excludes all competition.”

“The presence of a practitioner, who is not a reference figure of what is formulated” but rather, someone who serves.


Picture the scene: a practically empty room with enough space to fit a dozen children; the walls are covered with brown paper; in the centre of the room is a well-crafted, narrow, free-standing piece of furniture that holds eighteen paint pots of gorgeous colours; beside each of these pots are three of the highest quality paint brushes - one large, one medium, one small. There is nothing else in the room. ‘The Play of Painting’ is one of my favourite activities with children.

Children arrive at the entrance to this studio, where they are greeted one by one by the practitioner on arrival. They put on an apron and enter the studio, leading the practitioner to a chosen spot of wall where he or she pins up a large sheet of paper at a comfortable standing height for the child, who then immediately gets to work - or as some would say, to ‘play’. The practitioner’s role is to serve the child (or adult if applicable): if a drip of paint starts to run down the paper, the painter calls out “drip”, and the one doing the serving dabs it up with a cloth; if a specific colour is not available on the palette table it is mixed on a little lid by request. Most importantly, the practitioner neither teachers, comments, nor judges the traces and formations of the person whose hands are at work. They are neither artists, teachers, or therapists, and the space they hold is not an art class or a therapy session, though the therapeutic quality of what takes place here is evident for most.

Lenny arrived aged seven, traumatised by school. He was highly sensitive to ridicule, and rebellious in the face of authority. He stood at the entrance to The Play of Painting studio, refusing to put on an apron, agitated and twitchy. “I don’t know how to paint,” he said. “I’m not doing that”. There was nowhere to hide in this room. Everyone’s work was visible and scrutable, though Lenny didn’t know that no one here did any scrutinising. Children were politely reminded not to comment on each other’s work, and by the time Lenny arrived, children had learnt not to say things such as: ‘Ugh, yours is much better than mine!’ Or, ‘It looks stupid! why did you plonk that brown blob in the middle?’. And neither were there teachers making evaluative remarks for all to note and compare. Lenny watched at the doorway or sat on a chair in the corner where he could soak in the calm and pleasant, uninhibited atmosphere in which there was no mockery or mandating whatsoever. Within a few sessions of observing and tiptoeing in and out of the space, Lenny was also creatively rediscovering himself through stroke and colour. Finally, he was free from outer stresses and those stifling inner tensions of comparison and self-criticism.