By
Heidi Trautmann
A
wise man is the leader of a community when he supports creative and art
education because then he wants people, especially people from very young age, to learn to use their senses and somehow that
will help him to do his job because people will understand the many problems
one day.
Especially,
when you get trained people to lead these centres, to teach the use of tools
and how to be creative with little means, i.e. from inside of themselves.
I
realized lately, that such centres have started to operate, courses for
theatre, creative drama and art in one of the Municipality buildings next to
the Wednesday Market. I was very pleased
to hear that an appreciated artist and friend, a sculptor, Zehra Sonya, is one
of them to lead the art classes.
I
had surprised them one Saturday morning in one of the big studios at the top of
the building where a group of children at the age of 5 – 8 perhaps, were
working on long tables to paint their dream castle. One came forward with his
cheese castle, the other with ice cream castle, one did the Kyrenia castle, but
all realized that there is a long road to go to reach it; they proudly showed
me their work; In the shelves of the studio I could see the works of other art disciplines,
clay work, sculpting with all kind of
materials such as tin foil or carton;
Children she teaches on Saturdays, younger and older groups, but with
adult students she works in the evenings, drawing and oil painting
“Although”, she says, “I am not a painter in
the true sense of the word, I am a sculptor and approach the subject
differently, I take much pleasure to occupy myself with painting or drawing
while I am teaching.”
You
do need a three-dimensional understanding when painting and not only for
figures, for spaces, for depth also, the same is valid for drawing. With
perspective, for example one learns the feeling for depth; then there is
composition. The members of our Thursday Art Group did it the other way round;
we decided to go for sculpting to learn the three-dimensional experience and
all of a sudden we questioned ourselves how an ear is constructed because we
only saw it from one side.
I
am very happy to learn about these new possibilities in Girne because I am
often asked by people where they could possibly join art classes. So if you are interested to either take your
children to art classes or you want yourself do drawing or painting, get in touch
with the Girne Municipality. For the
courses in creative drama and theatre the knowledge of Turkish would be needed,
in the art classes you speak with your tools.