Relational Making: Re/Imagining Theories of Child Art

Abstract

In this article, I consider the changing landscape of art education and explore potential directions for the field to situate itself within the spaces of early childhood education. I position that current understandings of child art and its use in both research and practice in the early childhood classroom are limited by a lack of connection to contemporary art practices. Working from the perspective of relational aesthetics, I examine children’s drawing practices to suggest an extension of sociocultural theories of child art. To do so, I provide descriptions of young children’s voluntary drawing events that illuminate the convivial nature of their productions, as well as nomadic processes involved in their work.