The Davis Kids meet Mr. Pollock [by Ben]

Back in college, when I was working on my BFA in graphic design, I spent a summer in New York City. Almost every day after work was spent walking around cool bookstores, and galleries and museums. I fell in love with dozens of new artists with each visits. Among those was Jackson Pollock. If you don't know much about him, he is an abstract expressionist most famous for his drip paintings. Like most moderns expressionists, his paintings look a lot like something you could do on your own given a few hours and a few cans of paint. Here's an example: I always secretly wanted to make my own Pollock, but never quite got around to it. Then came marriage and kids, and I started to notice how lots of my coworkers and friends had their kids artwork up in their homes and offices. But it was always lame finger-paintings and line drawings. And I started to wonder if I could get my kids to paint a Pollock. Then a few years ago I saw this movie "My Kid Could Paint That" about a 4-year-old who made some expressionist paintings with the help of her dad, an artist, and sold one for $300,000. I figured my kids could definitely do that. I really wanted to have the kids do a huge painting like Pollock, like 10 feet by 6 feet, but figured we ought to start a little smaller. We got some canvases and some paint and threw down a tarp in the garage and let the kids have at it. Here's James, age 6: And here is Avery, Age 3 (almost 4): And of course, Briella, age 20 months: And the finished products: I went out and bought a 6 foot by 4 foot canvas for the next painting. It ought to just fit the huge empty wall above our stairs. We'll put up some pictures when the kids are done. [If your kids want to do something like this it is just a plain old canvas from Michaels, these are 16x20. For each kid we got 6 different colors of 2 oz. cheap acrylic paint from Michaels for 59 cents each, and didn't even use it all.]