A child who loves to pick apples may depict a figure with exaggerated fingers or the child of an aloof mother may draw her without arms. After collecting the artwork of more than a thousand children from around the world, Cox-Bishop knows children's pictures transcend language and cultural barriers. Item by item she examined the drawings of each child, noting technique, line quality, use of color and space-and tried to statistically determine any gender differences. A child's art is reflective of his or her culture, she says, and maybe each of the children had been similarly influenced by satellite television, common text-books and teachers educated in a southern culture. Cycling What surprised her more, however, was discovering that no matter where children live, their visual consciousness develops at the same rate.
All kids learn to draw, learn to represent the world at about the same stages, which is incredible.
It blew me away. Developing visual literacy is important, Cox-Bishop says, because 80 per cent of the messages that bombard us are visual, not written. We lose those skills. The ability to represent the world visually comes from the intuitive, emotional, right hemisphere of the brain, she says. Our culture emphasizes the more logical, linear, left hemisphere.