ArtsSmarts- Impressions of Newfoundland Expressions

Opening the door to the colourful world of both intuitive painting and Newfoundland expressions at Beachy Cove Elementary School was a blessing on so many levels.

Facilitating students’ messy fun for the first 2 community layers was just the beginning.

Witnessing their individualized creative expression of a Newfoundland saying on the 3rd layer was both heart-opening and mind-blowing!

This is truly a success story:

• 535 happy children got to express their creativity in a culturally symbolic intuitive painting over 5.5-weeks.
• This resulted in the creation of a gorgeously illustrated treasury of Newfoundland & Labrador sayings available to all.
• After over a year of pandemic restrictions, parents were finally allowed back into the school to be involved with their children.
• As the project artist, I grew both professionally and personally (more on that below).

As you’ll see in the video, so many were involved in making this a success story. Thank you to all!

Laun Shoemaker, a Grade 4 French Immersion teacher at Beachy Cove Elementary School, approached me a few years back with the idea of making an illustrated book of Newfoundland & Labrador sayings with the whole school.

I came up with an intuitive painting process that had classes participate as a group on 2 layers of a community background before cutting that up to work on individual pieces. This collaborative foundation ensured that the whole class contributed to the success of each student. The technique for the 3rd layer was adjusted for each grade level –  Kindergarten to Grade 4.

Although the Newfoundland & Labrador Arts Council granted us the maximum allowance for this ArtsSmarts project, the pandemic put it on hold.

In the Fall of 2021, Lisa Cobb, the school’s Reading Specialist and new ArtsSmarts project Liaison, stepped in as Laun was now on sabbatical.

She and Carolyn Lethbridge, the associate director, spent time with the children of the lower grades to introduce the concept of Newfoundland expressions and symbolic representation.

Parents & grandparents were also asked to help their children choose expressions.

By the time they came to my sessions, their focus was on translating their expressions symbolically & visually.

Creating the artwork was just the first part of this ambitious project.

Lisa & Laun  (while still on sabbatical) worked tirelessly on scanning the artwork and designing the book before the children got to take their paintings home.

“Impressions of Expressions: An Illustrated Guide to Popular Newfoundland Sayings” is now available for download here (492 MB).

This PDF is now a free resource honouring the rich language of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. Copies will be sent to places like The Centre For Newfoundland Studies at MUN, ArtsNL, and the Minister of Education.

A printed hardcover copy is archived in the Beachy Cove Resource Centre.

During my first days of teaching, I learned the school usually has an ArtsSmarts Open House at the end of the project to share the work with parents.

This year, however, that wasn’t a possibility due to the pandemic safety guidelines.

Instead, I  decided to play with another of my passions: videography.

So while the school team worked on the book, I worked on the video above.

All children featured in this video were photographed with permission from their parents/guardians.

Times have changed… Part of modern teaching, it seems, is taking photos for Twitter to keep the parents up to date on what’s happening at school. That served us well!

I may have been surprised at first to discover I could photograph most of the children. Once I got started, though, you couldn’t stop me. Fun!

This Open House video turned out to be a silver lining to the pandemic. Now, this project can be shared with a much wider audience. Enjoy!

This was a huge project born from an ambitious vision. 

The further we got from the inspired grant proposal-writing phase, the more daunting it became for me.

Comfort zones are an interesting thing. They stretch, but they also shrink.

This ArtsSmarts project was definitely a stretch. After being a happy hermit at home or solo nature videographer for 2 years during the pandemic, my comfort zones around crowds had shrunk. A lot.

I knew better than to ignore a Spirit Call though. And this project was just that!

I may have lived on 3 continents and 5 provinces, but answering each Spirit Call was a stretch of my comfort zones.

When change comes from Guidance, however, it’s a whole lot easier to trust that the stretch is a good thing… for myself and / or the Greater Good.

I confess, the idea of teaching 535 kids intuitive painting for 5 weeks in a neighbouring town had become …. intimidating.

I’d been tempted to cancel the project a few times when it was postponed, and I was given the choice.

But my pendulum and this corner of my 2021 intuitive vision board  made it very clear that this project was meant to be… for the children and also for me!

So once again, I was asked by my Higher Self to feel the fear and do it anyway.

I even invested in my first car as the school was 30 minutes drive away, with no bus service. That in itself was a big stretch, and I’m not just talking financially. Not having a car had been part of my simple living choices. Now I was exploring freedom of a different kind.

Of course my organizational skills and background in both recreation and teaching helped.

Once the supplies were finally in hand, and I was given a classroom to set up (instead of the possible scenario of having to go from classroom to classroom due to pandemic guidelines) I breathed easier.

Still – what a stretch!

• 24 classes (up to 27 students in a class) x 3 sessions each
• switching back and forth between English & French
• 24 large watercolour paper surfaces, 3 a day in 2 splash zones
• over 400 painting tools divided in 3 kits for sanitization between groups
• 14 colours of fluid & heavy body acrylic paints
• 18 parent-volunteers, 26 teachers & interns, 2 teaching-learning assistants and student assistants
• countless hours of shooting & editing B-roll, including constant weather-watching for drone opportunities outside of teaching hours. There aren’t a lot of windless sunny days in Portugal Cove St. Phillips!
• and so much more

Elementary school teachers are definitely heroes! I got a taste of what it takes, but only for 5 weeks! 

What a difference from my 25 years of teaching English as a Second Language to university adults! There’s no assigning group-work if you need to go to the washroom – lol!

After the first week, my body no longer felt like a stranger. Being on my feet all day instead of working at the computer or painting table was big change.

After the first two weeks, I only got to school before the custodian on days I thought I could shoot a good time lapse of the sunrise.

Thank goodness for the amazing support of the school staff and all the parent volunteers. I couldn’t have done it without them!

On days with no volunteers, it was non-stop.

On days with more than one volunteer, I could step back to shoot a few clips during the session to create this video. My tripod was part of the team.

I’ll admit, having both my teaching and photographer hats on at the same time was a juggle. My paint-covered phone cases are the proof!

5.5 weeks later, I could hardly believe how smoothly & quickly it all went.

With hundreds of people and moving pieces, it’s truly amazing how it all came together!

I was so thankful I hadn’t given in to the fear or overwhelm.

My best self soon felt right at home organizing & enthusiastically leading this program.

Mostly, I’m so grateful I stretched those comfort zones for the children! 

Being part of a school community was a beautiful “from me to we” experience.

Who knows the extent of the gift this experience was for them. I trust, however, that it’s a gift that will keep on giving.

May this bit of truth-saying encourage you look at where fear is stopping you from trying something new – be it a project, workshop, hobby, trip or relationship. 

Ask your Higher Self what’s in the Highest Good.

Spirit Calls, as I call them, are always an intuitive invitation to grow. Your ego may want to keep you small by promoting the status quo, but that’s no way to emerge more fully into your True Self.

I have no regrets whatsoever for saying “Yes!” again and again to this project.

I would have regretted backing out though…

Passing by a line-up of kids waiting to leave the library:

“That’s the lets-get-messy-lady!”

When asked what they’d learned in our 3 classes together:

“If I talk to myself like I talk to my best friend, good ideas come into my head on how to fix things.”

” There are no mistakes.”

“I can put love into my work”.

“If you mix all the warm and cool colours when they’re wet, it makes mud! Let them dry!”

“I love to flick paint!”

When a child ran up to me after the class and gave me a big hug, looked up at me and said:

You’re my mommy’s favourite artist.

• To download your copy of the PDF “Impressions of Expressions: An Illustrated Guide to Popular Newfoundland Sayings”(492 MB), click here.
• If you’d like to try intuitive painting for yourself or with a group, I offer you my free Guide to Intuitive Painting here.
• Or join my live workshop for adults in St. John’s on January 22nd/29th  – beyond the technical to the transformational. Info here.
• To visit my exhibition “Beauty at the Birch” (120 LeMarchant Rd.) during the holiday season, contact [email protected]
• To learn about upcoming events and new work, make sure to sign-up to my weekly  Art & Inspiration Moments . You’ll enjoy a free meditation download as my thank you for choosing to be on my list.
• To view all my available intuitive paintings for sale (and other intuitive services), go here.
• To order prints of my artwork in your choice of size & medium, go here.
• To view my YouTube video playlists (NL Features, Guided meditations, Intuitive painting, Inspiration & fun, etc.), subscribe to my channel here.

Do you want to share your impressions of this project? Feel free to comment below!