ON Friday, May 21, children at Hayward’s Primary School had the opportunity to enjoy seeing their work displayed as part of the school’s “Take One Picture” gallery.

Loosely based on the National Gallery’s annual competition, children and teachers at Hayward’s used Georges Seurat’s famous painting, “A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte” as inspiration for a range of work that came to follow. 

Every year group responded to the work in different ways.

Year 6 produced a range of final pieces including "Umbrellas of Hope”, which were painted using Seurat’s pointillist style as well as intricate sculptures of the people and animals in Seurat’s painting.

In Year 5, Miss Tutton’s class produced work linked to Peter H Reynold’s book, “The Dot” after being inspired by Seurat’s pointillist style while Miss Fleming’s group explored the artist’s use of colour by focussing on a tiny section of the painting and recreating this using a range of materials, including milk bottle tops!

Year 4 experimented with a range of media including paint, pencil, pastel and collage to showcase movement after the children were inspired by the activities of the people and animals in the painting.

Year 3 studied the light captured by Seurat and produced beautiful final pieces of trees and their shadows.

In Key Stage 1, Year 2 fell in love with pointillism and applied this technique when painting their own pictures of Shobrooke Park.

Becoming excited by the natural elements of Seurat’s painting, Year 1 named their project, “Take One Leaf” and worked on printing and line drawings before producing some beautiful leaf coasters.

Finally, in Reception, children loved learning about Georges Seurat and couldn’t believe that his painting took two years to make and was made up of dots entirely!

They used a range of materials to recreate the Island of La Grande Jatte before placing themselves (in photographic form) there in the scene. One pupil even produced their own story about a trip to France where she had chance to visit Seurat and paint with him!

The whole school loved seeing the children’s work displayed as part of the Hayward’s gallery and all pupils were so proud of the final pieces they had produced as well as the work they had completed in their Art Journals. Finn in Year 3 really did sum up the whole school experience when he said, "We’re all little Seurats now!"

Head teacher, Andy Smith, who was delighted with the exhibition said: “I would like to thank Jo Turan who has worked really hard with the children to put on the “Take One Picture” Gallery .

“I would also like to thank Crediton Art Centre for lending us the boards and artist, John Lewis for giving a presentation to the Year 6 children.”