Art as Meaning of Confidence: Bridging the Gap between Child Art
and Adult Art All children draw and paint with great enthusiasm.
Ironically, most persons after childhood tend to feel a lack of
confidence when asked to perform in these areas. Many
adolescents look on their art work as childish, naïve, and
lacking in finesse. Something seems to happen between childhood
and adulthood that makes many individuals in our society shy
away from the visual arts. From survey, there are only ten
percent of all secondary students enrolls in art classes.
Obviously, this is a critical time concerning visual art
expression. There are two reasons that enrollment in art class
at the secondary level is low. First, when children reach the
age of eight or nine, awareness emerges of visual and spatial
qualities such as distance, shadows, and texture is probably the
result of an increased differentiation at that time. Adolescents
feel they cannot do art and will avoid this area if the art work
does not come up to their expectatio