All About Mentoring Spring 2011 - SUNY Empire State College

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from peace to war and homes under aerial
attack, escape, fear, coping, and anger
directed at the enemy.
Transition from Peace to War
The first set of children’s drawings, depicting
homes and surrounding areas under attack,
are representative of many such drawings.
They show air bombardment, face-toface
combat, street bombs, and damaged
buildings and people. Whether home is
mud, thatch, wood, cement or brick, the
drawings show remarkably similar scenes of
air and ground attacks. The viewer is drawn
into the scene, to the child’s clear depiction
of his crumbled world. The drawings
make it unhappily easy to enter the child’s
psychological reality: loss of the assumed
safety of home.
During the Spanish Civil War in the late
1930s, young Spaniards were evacuated to
children’s colonies elsewhere in Spain or
in neighboring France, away from active
violence, where they attended school
and drew pictures. One such child was a
13-year-old girl, who drew a transitional
moment from peace to war. Drawing 1
depicts a peaceful town under aerial attack,
mothers walking holding a child’s hand, two
wounded or dead among the neat buildings,
one building shattered, and a child covering
her eyes.
The child artist captures the new reality in
great detail, juxtaposing orderliness and
human care and attachment with destruction
Drawing 1: Spain, Girl, age 13, 1937-38.
and death. She
skillfully presents
a complex and
nuanced scene,
showing her ability
to render scale
and proportion.
The pretty sturdy
buildings evoke
stability; the mother
and child pairs
evoke trust and
care. The child artist
surely intended to
show innocence,
unawareness of the
threat that, in fact, has taken place around
the corner. The picture centers on a child
mid-page under a substantial verdant tree,
covering her eyes, suggesting the wish to
not see or accept what is happening around
her. This drawing is a particularly fine
illustration of the changed world faced
by children in war and of the dawning
awareness of the threat and what has been
and will be lost.
Another transitional drawing similarly
shows normal life and its family bonds
juxtaposed to aerial attack, damaged
buildings and victims. Drawn during the
wars in Yugoslavia (1991-1995) by an
11-year-old boy from Zagreb, Croatia, it
is titled “Mama, Wait for Me.” A bomber
dominates the scene with a bomb below it
on a direct trajectory to mother and child
who are walking away from the yard and
Drawing 2: Croatia, “Mama, Wait for Me.” Boy, age 11, c. 1991.
the home with its shattered and dislodged
windows. Another bomb is on a trajectory
toward a child’s swing, as if symbolic of
attack on the child and childhood pleasure.
The next transitional illustration was drawn
by a child from Darfur in 2005 (unknown
age and sex) and again contains air and
ground attacks. In this drawing, the scene
is broader as if viewed from a distance and
includes many huts and people. (Drawing 3)
The roughly drawn huts and stick figure
people stand in contrast to the more detailed
bombers and ground attack vehicles, as if
to emphasize the overpowering assault, the
extent of damage, and the entire village
having been victimized. Children often draw
disturbing objects in greater detail than
other parts of their pictures. (Drawing 3)
Drawings 1-3 represent increasing
dominance of wartime assaults. Drawing 1
shows the contrast of peace and attack in
a small town. Drawing 2 shows an aerial
attack on a house that surely is meant to
be the child artist’s. Drawing 3 shows the
rampant bombing of an entire village in
Darfur, Southern Sudan. Another Darfur
drawing shows a family’s escape, which
eventually brought them to a camp in Chad.
Drawing 4 by a 9-year-old girl from Darfur
shows victims holding each other. This
drawing of escape emphasizes connection
among family members. The child artist
explained what she drew as people running
from the Janjaweed, guns, planes and bombs
“all together.” “All of us – my family –
we were screaming and running from the
Janjaweed … holding each other by the
arms to keep together. Here in camp we
are safe, but my father … was lost.” At the
suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011