At Madison elementary school in Phoenix, Arizona in the late 1950s, problem students like me were often sent to the art teacher’s room. Unfortunately for me, my objection to sitting in a little desk, arranged in little rows, then moving to another room full of desks in rows when a loud bell rang, made me a problem student. Fortunately for me, the art teacher was my mother. After the pin-drop quiet, pin-neat order of our home-rooms, the happy chaos of Mrs. Rheingold’s room was like travelling to an altogether different dimension. Mrs. Rheingold’s philosophy of teaching art was that all human beings are creative innovators, have a need to express ourselves creatively, but many - most - people are shut down at an early age. Someone looks at the page you are happily scribbling and tells you that your horse doesn’t look like a horse, and you decide to leave art to specialists. Mrs. Rheingold didn’t teach technique. She gave permission to play. So I never bothered much with drawing horses that look like horses.
