Every child is an artist with the uncensored ability to express their own creativity. There is a brief window of time through which that self-expression can be cultivated or else lost.
Grabriella Fortune is a local Stratford artist whose art workshops teach the basics of paint and art, but more important, facilitate children in finding their way to unleash their own artistic voice and identity.
Fortune came to Stratford from Guyana to attend the Nancy Campbell Academy for Grade 12. There she studied visual arts and participated in service projects in which she would teach children’s classes in mindfulness. Combining the fun of self-expression through paint with her Guyanese college studies in psychology, Fortune developed workshops to foster artistic independence in children.
“It’s about you and your expression, and what you want to put on the canvas,” she tells me. “It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being true to yourself.”
Fortune inspires her students to look deeply at their art and recognize their honest beauty.
Her inspiration is in her passionate belief that a healthy society starts with the child.
“Each of us needs to have some kind of mindful practice, and it starts with kids. If we start when we’re young, then when we become adults, it’s so much easier.” The creative outlet is healthy and cathartic, and allows the space and time for mindfulness in place of mindlessness.
“I turn to my art, because it’s such a great outlet for me,” she shares. “But the tender age is when we soak in everything, and learn how to channel it and express it.”
Recently Fortune has been moving into abstract art, because it feels more freeing.
Her workshops are often themed. They include acrylic on canvas, and occasionally on other objects, like vases or rocks. The practice of being present and being expressive in this way is a great outlet for children that provides them the “opportunity to feel proud of themselves and feel accomplished.”
In partnership with Vibrations Rock Shop in Market Square, where her classes are held, Fortune also offers adult classes, but her greatest reward is in seeing the faces of the students in the children’s classes light up.
As summer approaches, she aims to have outdoor classes too, and is looking forward to her first solo art show coming soon at Her Collab Co in St. Marys.
The future is a blank canvas, and Fortune inspires the children and the young at heart to make it is as truly expressive and colourful as they’re imaginations will take them.
