Boryana Zanova has been teaching art to children for 15 years but she had never been in contact with orphans until last weekend.
“I was so positively surprised by the 15 children who attended the art classes at the Balkan Days of Art at the Kavacite resort last week,” she said. Being with kids who are in such a position made her take the job to heart at their first meeting.
“I was totally elevated emotionally while we were preparing the joint exhibition,” she said. “The mutual contact with them shortened the distance between us and transformed the work into a pleasure.”
The children were free to draw whatever they felt like and managed to express whatever they wanted. Naturally they all strived for the completion of the task, aiming to finish a painting for a group exhibition. “These were all children, who needed to show their paintings and to be seen by the others,” she explained. In the final part of the five-day Balkan Days of Art, all the artists from the class ended up as a unified group and exchanged contact numbers.
Talking about her current job as a teacher, she confessed: “I was not confident at the launch of the children’s studio and did not dare to believe it would be successful.” The experiment to search for something and later to find it was the main thing for her. The National Palace of Children in Sofia hosted the quest for art and Zanova had to put herself at the children’s disposal.
The initial small group enlarged into a group of some 15 children quite soon after the artistic classes started. As director of stage-setting professionally, she was provoked to create non-standard ways of working with children. All of the affection for the children and the novelties involved in working with them sprang from Zanova’s interest in theatre performances and plays. Plastic art, that is how she described her work, is a non-standard attitude to art and works well with children.
Zanova provides the children with a picture of a doll to stimulate their imagination and creative powers. They start by producing a few small-sized works depicting characters from their favourite fairy-tales and expand them to bigger canvases.
These characters, for Zanova, are the personification of the best and most beautiful metaphors. “It was easier for me, in assisting children, to start with pencil and paper and move on to the various techniques (aquarelle, pastel, etc),” she said. The artist insists on the freedom of work, which is fundamental to children’s art or art as a whole. She said there should not be any selection based on the children’s gift for drawing. “What I teach them is love for what you are doing,” she said. “These are children who sit down and draw as a result of their own desire and motivation, nothing else.”
The greatest present for her are the feelings of being meaningful and helpful to those who are talented. The key for success while working with children is hidden somewhere in her deepest love for both children and work. The essential parts of her being are the quest for being natural and exaggerating things, as well as reacting spontaneously. “I am extremely honest and children sense it,” she said. Love, personal example, trust and friendship are the key factors for becoming a role model for the children at the studio. Falsehood and distrust are easily detected by kids, she said.
Zanova and the children in her studio work with dolls and their art is close to sculpting. “Working with dolls is one of the most relaxing things for reaching a sense of aesthetics,” she explained. She considers the doll in the painting to be therapeutic and that is why children are given total freedom with it. “My studio is my fortress of imagination, a charger for my emotional batteries,” she confessed. She has never imagined a life outside of art. Having an actress for a mother and a painter for a husband gave her no other choice but to paint, she explained.
“I was so positively surprised by the 15 children who attended the art classes at the Balkan Days of Art at the Kavacite resort last week,” she said. Being with kids who are in such a position made her take the job to heart at their first meeting.
“I was totally elevated emotionally while we were preparing the joint exhibition,” she said. “The mutual contact with them shortened the distance between us and transformed the work into a pleasure.”
The children were free to draw whatever they felt like and managed to express whatever they wanted. Naturally they all strived for the completion of the task, aiming to finish a painting for a group exhibition. “These were all children, who needed to show their paintings and to be seen by the others,” she explained. In the final part of the five-day Balkan Days of Art, all the artists from the class ended up as a unified group and exchanged contact numbers.
Talking about her current job as a teacher, she confessed: “I was not confident at the launch of the children’s studio and did not dare to believe it would be successful.” The experiment to search for something and later to find it was the main thing for her. The National Palace of Children in Sofia hosted the quest for art and Zanova had to put herself at the children’s disposal.
The initial small group enlarged into a group of some 15 children quite soon after the artistic classes started. As director of stage-setting professionally, she was provoked to create non-standard ways of working with children. All of the affection for the children and the novelties involved in working with them sprang from Zanova’s interest in theatre performances and plays. Plastic art, that is how she described her work, is a non-standard attitude to art and works well with children.
Zanova provides the children with a picture of a doll to stimulate their imagination and creative powers. They start by producing a few small-sized works depicting characters from their favourite fairy-tales and expand them to bigger canvases.
These characters, for Zanova, are the personification of the best and most beautiful metaphors. “It was easier for me, in assisting children, to start with pencil and paper and move on to the various techniques (aquarelle, pastel, etc),” she said. The artist insists on the freedom of work, which is fundamental to children’s art or art as a whole. She said there should not be any selection based on the children’s gift for drawing. “What I teach them is love for what you are doing,” she said. “These are children who sit down and draw as a result of their own desire and motivation, nothing else.”
The greatest present for her are the feelings of being meaningful and helpful to those who are talented. The key for success while working with children is hidden somewhere in her deepest love for both children and work. The essential parts of her being are the quest for being natural and exaggerating things, as well as reacting spontaneously. “I am extremely honest and children sense it,” she said. Love, personal example, trust and friendship are the key factors for becoming a role model for the children at the studio. Falsehood and distrust are easily detected by kids, she said.
Zanova and the children in her studio work with dolls and their art is close to sculpting. “Working with dolls is one of the most relaxing things for reaching a sense of aesthetics,” she explained. She considers the doll in the painting to be therapeutic and that is why children are given total freedom with it. “My studio is my fortress of imagination, a charger for my emotional batteries,” she confessed. She has never imagined a life outside of art. Having an actress for a mother and a painter for a husband gave her no other choice but to paint, she explained.
