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Father Daughter Collaborations
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These images were created when Hyunji was 4 years old. Her style of working has changed considerably since then.
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The works shown here are the collaboration of an established artist and his four year old daughter.
While one might be tempted to say that the artist is poking fun at abstract art. Indeed the response of the untrained eye to unfamiliar work often is "My child could do that." However this is not the case for these works. The origin of these works was really a result of each half of the creative team following their own natural impulses.
HyunJi who had seen her father working in the studio regularly, had a strong desire to get in there and make her mark.
Doug found the naive linework of his daughter an inviting structure around which to add color.
The result is something that the art world might have a hard time classifying as it is neither fish nor fowl.
This weekend having viewed the film "My Kid Could Paint That" I realized that Hyunji is the same age as the young painter Marla Olmstead depicted in that movie. The paintings shown here would have been done about the same time that Marla was gaining fame and going through the media circus. I enjoyed viewing the film not only because of the shared experience of working with a child, but also because it presents a number of insightful points about the world of art. As you can see from my statement above, written in 2004, I was exploring some of the same ideas and even used an approximation of the film's title in my comments on the paintings. I found myself sharing the same skepticism that the filmmaker has for the parents claim that Marla is the sole author of the works attributed to her.
I think my interest in coloring Hyunji's sketches stems from the same desires that prompted the Olmsteads, namely parental pride, an interest in childhood freedom from preconceived ideas about art, and a desire to work collaboratively with one's child. In contrast to the Olmsteads, I was quite clear about the dual authorship of the work. The work we did together never created a media buzz (not even a flicker of interest) which after seeing the movie is a very good thing. The other thing I can share about my experience is that Hyunji's interests quickly moved on. I can imagine that for Marla to have produced or participated in such a large body of work, a fair amount of parental pressure was exerted (such as was highlighted in the 60 minutes piece).
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Works by Doug E. L. Haynes
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