Flowers by Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is sometimes called ‘the princess of polka dots'. Although she makes lots of different types of art – paintings, sculptures, performances and installations – they have one thing in common, DOTS!
Yayoi Kusama tells the story of how when she was a little girl she had a drean that freaked her out. She was in a field of flowers when they all started talking to her! The heads of flowers were like dots that went on as far as she could see, and she felt as if she was disappearing – into this field of endless dots. This weird experience influenced most of her later work.
By adding all-over marks and dots to her paintings, drawings, objects and clothes she feels as if she is making them (and herself) melt into, and become part of, the bigger universe. She said:
‘Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment’. www.tatekids.org
The video link below can show you more of Yayoi Kusama’s work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W
Below are some directions for how to draw basic flowers. Use those directions as a guide, but color them in with patterns and polka dots like Yayoi Kusama’s paintings below. Draw large, fill the page. What kind of Patterns will you put in the center, in the petals? The leaves?
Work by Yayoi Kusama
