Children enjoy neon painting at GEMA Gallery

Neon Painting ended a series of summer workshops taking place at GEMA Gallery, as part of the GSLA’s Summer Programme Culture and Leisure activities, in partnership with Gibraltar Cultural Services.

The workshop, from 11am to 12pm, was led by Lizanne Figueras, Stefano Blanca Sciacaluga, and Alex Menez of Kitchen Studios, and it aimed to show children unconventional ways of painting and being creative.

“We look for things that are a bit more fringe and go with it,” Ms Figueras said.

“I think it’s interesting, different, fun, not just for kids but also for adults.”

For Kitchen Studios, encouraging arts in the community and fostering creativity has been the main goal, and they added she would like to interest people in “coming together to do creative things”.

Ms Figueras also outlined the importance of creating an atmosphere for children to draw inspiration from, adding “it’s not just doing the art, but also playing with the scenery”.

She also highlighted how GEMA’s “charming” nature added to the ability to create their desired “vibe”.

For those children wanting to pick up a new hobby, Mr Blanca Sciacaluga explained it was “easy to try out at home,” and that it was “nice for them to do something different”.

The children felt very satisfied with their own work, and their inspiration had been crucial to their final design.

“I made a desert, and my inspiration was one of the example pictures,” said 10-year-old Leah Tasman.

They were all also fascinated with the process of painting with neon paint, and overcoming the struggles that came with working with a new material.

Lucia Ferrary, 11, outlined how she struggled with the texture of the thin neon paint.

“I found it difficult to make it bright,” she said.

Similarly, Anastasia Stanojevič, 13, described how “the paint changes colour when it dries and the paper absorbs the paint,” so she had to keep working on it.

These activities have been able to teach the children some resilience, as well as enhancing their creativity and helping them build on their skills.

“It’s fun and it’s something I can do at home, I would definitely come back and recommend it,” said Lucia Ferrary.

Gema Martinez Corrales is a student on work experience with the Chronicle.