I am a teacher – an educator of young children. I am also an artist – a painter. In my classroom, I spend hours cultivating, imagining, visualizing, inspiring, creating, and nurturing the children in my care. In my studio, I layer colors on canvas. As a learning community, the students and I strive to incorporate art into all subjects, adding richness, color, texture, and a deeper meaning to our learning. On my canvases, I strive to bring forth life, movement, and light. Teaching is an emotional job, a sensorially rich career. It is a profession of continued reflection, re-examination, re-thinking, and re-working. Like a new canvas, each new school year holds limitless possibilities. Learning communities, like paintings, are unique, each with their own novel colors- simultaneously interacting, playing, collaborating, and disagreeing with one another. Paintings and classes each possess their own beauty and their unique challenges. I bring my ever-growing experience and developing techniques to my students and paintings alike.
Drawing inspiration from the confident, direct, and bold lines of David Hockney, the colors whimsically conjured by Wayne Thiebaud, and the strength and power of Melissa Chandon’s iconic imagery, in my Northern California home in Davis, mere miles from the two-room country schoolhouse in which I teach, I paint.
Cate Dayan 