How can painting operate as a hermeneutic practice in secondary level art and design education?

This research asks how painting might operate as a hermeneutic practice in secondary level art and design education. It could be argued that the significance accorded to painting in literature pertinent to this field is not often made explicit. In arguing for a re-evaluation of practices of painting in this context, I foreground the material affordances of paint for interpretive and imaginative making, and attend to notions of skill and expression as they relate to painting more widely. ‘Painting’ is proposed here as a hermeneutic practice which comprehends notions of interpretive making and ‘responsive openness’ - a disposition of openness on the part of the person painting to the potential of materials, tools, techniques and images. In seeking to construct a demonstrable link between theories of art production and reception, I employ Davey’s characterization (2006a) of Gadamer’s adopted term for participation, theoria, and commentary on Pareyson’s aesthetic theory of formativity (1988). I bring the educational scope of the concept of ‘Bildung’, an evolving process of self-formation, into correspondence with a view of painting-as-making. In researching the potential of painting as a hermeneutic activity I conducted two painting projects with Year 9 and 10 students at the Saatchi Gallery, London. The first emphasized the material properties of paint and application processes. The second offered students the opportunity to follow personal concerns in making paintings by suggesting a self-directed experimental approach to working with paint and application tools. In analysing the resulting paintings, I bring a theoretical understanding of painting activity into constructive correspondence with examples of practical work. I suggest that the exploratory character of the projects, conducted beyond the curricular context, could inform an approach to painting in schools, and that the hermeneutic account of painting presented here may offer an orientation to enquiry for educators attending to other visual art practices in education