Compassionate artists

We aim for our students, amongst other things, to be balanced, caring, compassionate and principled. These photos of children in an orphanage in Haiti receiving portraits painted for them by ten students at St. Clare's are evidence of compassionate art by artists: IB students, Si Pei, Nozomi Handa, Zizheng Liu, Kai Yue Yang, Malika Badloe, Ia Croxton, Tyra Lagerberg, Carole Murithi, Kaja Zielinska and Robyn Stock did the portraits. The portraits were made from photographs of the children which were sent to us. The students worked really hard to make their paintings as lifelike as possible. As Tyra said: "I tried very hard to blow some kind of life into the painting, and after having worked on it several hours, I had come to know the subject intimately - the eyes, the smile, the nose."

If the portrait doesn't look like the child holding it, that is because sometimes the child in the portrait had moved on and so it was photographed with a sibling or friend - remember that some months pass between the photo being taken and sent to us and the portrait being painted and sent back to Haiti via our contact, Ben Schumaker, in the USA. Ben started The Memory Project which has now sent 25,000 portraits to children in orphanages in 31 different countries.

First year IB student, Nozomi Handa, emailed to say she "really recommends doing this project every year."

"I will certainly offer the opportunity to students this year and see if they would like to accept the challenge" - John Rolfe, Head of Art.

October 2010