Learning to ‘see’
Arvind Dhondphale
“Seeing” is one of the most amazing phenomena that we are gifted with. But, do we really ‘see’? Do we really know HOW to ‘see’? Do we really know WHAT to ‘see’?
To be able to ‘see’ is subjective. It means that the eyes, brain and mind need to be in harmony with each other. This is a very basic understanding of ‘seeing’. To be able to ‘see’ means to be able to ‘perceive by the eye’, it is a conscious action. In order to see, a person not only looks at the object, but he/she also understands it, perceives it and pays attention to it. Seeing can happen in various ways depending on the viewer’s perspective.
“We have eyes with no sense of aesthetics, we have ears but don’t know how to listen to music, we have mind but there is no realization of truth, we have hearts but sorrow of the world cannot reach there. We should get scared of these, because they take away Humanity from Humans” – Sosaku Kobayashi, Tomoee school. (From the book ‘Tottochan’)
What we see? Do we see colours, forms, textures, movement or change? To be able to see is not easy. Most of the time we get carried away with our preoccupied thoughts and thought processes. As Saint Dnyaneshwar says in his ‘Dnyaneshwaree’, “Aamucha prakruti pailikadil bhaavo | Jari kalpaneveen laagasi paaho | Tari majamaaji bhootehi vaavo | Je mee sarva mhanavuni ||” Dnya. 9-71 (This is a critique on the 5th shloka in the 9th chapter of ‘Shreemad Bhagwad Geeta’ by Shree Krishna.)
It says, if we are able to see without our concepts, we will be able to see the truth hidden behind all forms of Life. We will be able to see the Creator hidden in his Creations.
What we generally see is colours, shapes, forms, dimensions, depth of field (perspective), textures, etc. To complete the process of ‘seeing’ we need to have physical eyes, brain and a presence of mind along with the object. If any one of these is missing, then we cannot see. For example, the eyes are there, the brain receives the messages about the object in front of us but the mind is absent because it is somewhere else. The process then remains incomplete. This clearly shows that, ‘seeing’ is actually a focused activity. If it is not focused it fails to provide a deeper experience.
Many activities can be designed and planned around ‘seeing’. With the help of proper guidance, observation can be improved. In my experience not only children but parents and adults also do not have the ability to ‘see’. I’ve come across many people who do not know what to see or how to see. If they had been given a chance to explore what to see and how to see in their school days, they would have led a better quality of life than what they are leading in the present. To be able to see, to be able to observe is a very fundamental source of knowledge. It provides a very personal experience of knowing.
I’m sharing an exercise that I conducted – collecting objects from Nature and matching them with colours.
In this exercise I prepared a colour chart. I used a drawing paper sheet and then cut it into pieces of a particular size. Then in one of the art classes for class 6, I asked children to colour those pieces with oil pastels. Then I arranged and pasted those coloured pieces on a big sheet of paper.
I made sure that there was enough empty space around each colour square. I then showed the chart to children from the lower as well as higher classes and also the teachers in the staff room. I asked them to walk around the campus and collect natural objects of different colours, such as flowers, leaves, twigs, dead insects, etc. The staff and students had to bring the things they collected to the chart that was displayed in a common area. I kept a bottle of glue ready beside the chart. They had to observe the colour shades of the objects collected and match them with the colour squares on the chart and paste them in the empty space provided around that colour. What I observed was that the students were using their free time to collect the objects. This went on for more than two weeks. A few interested teachers also collected some objects and pasted them in the appropriate colour spaces.
Towards the end of the second week, a few children and the principal realized that the space around one particular blue colour remained empty. I remembered that I had seen blue flowers on the campus. But since it was not the season for them to bloom, the blue flowers were not seen. And the space around that blue colour remained empty till the end.
One interesting thing I realized was that children were collecting flowers, leaves, etc., and trying to match them with the closest possible colour on the chart. After a few days, they realized that the flower or the leaf that they had pasted had changed colour because it had dried up. But this process had stirred their curiosity and helped them come closer to Nature.
In this way, many interesting and creative exercises can be planned and executed. It may not be possible for a teacher to come up with new ideas all the time, but the teacher can explain to the children and they are sure to come up with their own ideas. This will increase the involvement of the children in the activity. The fact that an idea came from them helps them get involved in the activity better, physically as well as emotionally.
The author is an artist interested in child art. He works with the Peepal Grove School. He can be reached at arvind.dhondphale@gmail.com.
