Connecting: Across Generations, Through Art
In late November, fourteen students from Watershed School embarked on an empathy-based Painting Project at Brookdale Meridian, a senior living center in South Boulder. Led by art educator Chris Carithers, each student was partnered with a senior resident, asking thoughtful questions to learn about their lives, memories, and interests.
Students then created personalized paintings that reflected their partner’s experiences and values. Their challenge was to showcase their ability to conceptualize and execute a subject by taking specific details from another person’s lived experience and to create a painting that communicated it. Over several weeks, students researched, reflected, and refined their work, incorporating details that showed understanding and connection while honing their technical skills; students demonstrated their ability to mix paints to match perceptual color in the real world, to control shape while painting with oils, and to blend paints to create smooth transitions between colors and values.
On the students’ final visit to Brookdale, they gifted the paintings they’d made for their Brookdale partner along with a letter explaining the meaning behind the artwork.
““This experience made me realize how little time I spend with older people. Other than my grandparents, I haven’t really talked with anyone of that generation. I’m grateful to have been able to spend time with Joyce, my Brookdale partner, to have heard about her life and experiences. I now see that I have something to offer people like Joyce and it’s made me want to find more opportunities to connect with her generation.””
The personalized paintings students created for their partners.
““This collaboration took a lot of bravery on the part of not only the Brookdale Residents, but the students as well. The residents had to feel brave enough to trust that what they shared with the students would be treated with respect and love. The students needed to trust themselves to bring the memory to life in their painting.””
