Picasso's girlfriends: Yellowknife child artists follow the masters

A group of budding Yellowknife artists, aged 5 to 10, are learning to unleash their creativity by creating their own renditions of classic artworks by past masters such as Picasso and Monet.

In a recent course, artist Tracey Bryant inspired students with Picasso's portrait of Dora Maar.

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"Picasso believed that every child was an artist and the problem was to remain an artist when they grow up," Bryant says.

She's helping her students become artists for life. They've delved into the works of Europe's Master painters in classes such at Tom Thompson's Fall Leaf-scape, Seurat's Sunday Afternoon in Yellowknife Bay, and When Pigasso met Mootisse.

"I think kids are able to grasp more concepts than we think," Bryant says.

Lacey Furniss is just eight years old, and already has an appreciation for Picasso.

"He mixed up things like one side of the face and puts the other side of the face," she says.

Others have different favourites.

"For me it was Monet," says Jeddy Kehler, age six. "I really like the way she does the flowers."

Snigdha Garikaparthi, nine, is still figuring out what she likes.

"I don't know how it's suppose to be. I really just know how I feel about it."

In October, Bryant took a different track with a series called Creative Creatures, with classes largely based on the illustrations from children's books. The Sunday before Halloween, children worked on sugar skulls, inspired from Mexican folk art honouring the Day of the Dead.

The feeling from that one? Garikaparthi calls it the "emotion of scariness."