THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD (Essay, 2022)

This short philosophical essay explores the value of “looking through the eyes of a child”. While often brushed off as something trivial, the author argues that art can play a crucial role in cultivating a flexible approach to the experience of life, allowing us to find happiness in what is instead of what should be.

In the beginning of 2022 I got fascinated by the spontaneity of children’s drawings. I really liked how free and intuitive they would work. This felt like the complete opposite of the perfectionism that would get a hold of me from time to time.

At some point I made the conscious decision to start drawing like the way children do. Not necessarily to create something beautiful, but to experience the process and see what it would do to me. This turned out to be more difficult then I initially thought. I constantly had to refrain myself from over-analyzing the work. Sometimes I just scribbled a bit, other times I worked on a collection of robot figures.

After some time I started to notice some serious changes in the way I looked at the drawings of children and art in general. The things I learned during this time, helped me to successfully deal with my perfectionism and enable me to create a lot more freely.

In this zine I explore the value of “looking through the eyes of a child” and talk about subjectivity, the value of art as a conceptual vacuum and the importance of a flexible approach to the experience of life.