“… this laser focus on getting one particular thing done. This feeling that unless you’re working on it at all times, things are going to be bad. That kind of focus doesn’t set the conditions for insight or discovery.
… When you’re an adult watching a kid playing with a little toy, you just think that kid’s doing that and there’s nothing else to it. But from the kid’s perspective that toy is playing with them. It’s interactive. There’s amnesia about the deepness of that interchange and amnesia about how when you’re making a story”
Lynda Barry, interview by David Marchese: “A Genius Cartoonist Believes Child’s Play Is Anything But Frivolous, The New York Times, 5 September 2022
When playing with art materials, it’s not about controlling what they do, it’s about doing something and seeing what they do back. Exploring where the “what if I …?” leads, rather than having the route all plotted out before you start. It’s a conversation, not a lecture.
