The Age of the Artist

When I show art on here, I will generally tell you the age of the kid who drew it. This is not to say where that kid is developmentally, just to help you picture the scene as the drawing was being created.

I do not want to emphasize developmental age here, because it goofs up what I'm trying to get at: That drawing and creative thinking give people keys to the unique world between their ears. There is a general progression that artistic development tends to follow, so I'll refer loosely to that. But age is more of an insight into an individual person and where he or she is in life, not a developmental judgment. (There can be a lot of angst in teen drawings. Go figure.)

For example, Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 and did not read until he was 7. His parents said he was "sub-normal," and one of his teachers said he was "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams." Some of those foolish dreams turned out to be the basis for how we see our universe.