Coast Live Oak offers classes for all ages, year round in Orange County, California and surrounding counties.

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Art Programs
Taught by Amy Hay

The classes I teach share several underlying goals, one of which is to help students create their own artistic language. Through exploring many techniques and mediums, a young person develops their artistic language and learns how to use it to communicate ideas, feelings, theories, perspectives, and stories to others. Having this artistic language helps a person communicate with others and better understand themselves throughout the rest of their life.

Another skill I strive to impart is sight. Much of the work of art making is in careful attention to and observation of the world around us. I encourage my students to make connections, see patterns, and to clearly describe the feelings that images, form, and color evoke in them. How a child sees the world will shape how they communicate about and within it. The practice of looking at form and color and light and shadow in the everyday leads to many discoveries.

As a student of art becomes more aware of their own perspective, the next step is curiosity about other perspectives. Curiosity about other perspectives leads to empathy. Empathy is a skill we all do well in exercising.

Lastly, I believe that everyone is an artist. The question is … “What kind of artist am I?”