In this new program for 10- to 12-year-olds, participants will be invited to explore a wide range of artistic mediums, including painting, illustration, printmaking, sculpture, model making, and textile art. In continuity with our flagship programs for 4- to 9-year-olds, preteens will also be introduced to an artist of the week, allowing them to engage with an artistic practice in a more mature and in-depth way.

Each day, they will create and experiment with a project inspired by the works of the week’s featured artist, while participating in playful cultural mediation activities that help them discover these iconic creators. A weekly drawing class will further strengthen their technical skills and sense of observation.

Every week, the group will take part in an outing to a Montreal museum related to the featured artist’s practice. Possible destinations include the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Architecture, or the Museum of Contemporary Art. A local artist represented in our boutique will also meet with the children to share their artistic approach and experience.

The week will be punctuated with free time at La Fontaine Park or atop Mount Royal, where participants can enjoy time together, sketch in their notebooks, or simply take in Montreal’s natural surroundings.

They will leave with multiple artworks, meaningful experiences, enriching artistic references, and new friends, ready to keep exploring their creativity long after the camp ends.

Week 3 – Mark Tansey

During this third week, preteens will explore the monochromatic and figurative world of Mark Tansey, a contemporary American painter. Using deliberately limited color palettes, Tansey creates works that subvert the aesthetics of advertising and the visual language of 1970s American culture. With humor and subtlety, he critiques consumer society and the visual codes that shape the nuclear family.

Inspired by his pictorial universe, participants will take painting and drawing classes and experiment with various mediums—oil, acrylic, and watercolor. They will learn to create their own color palettes and complete a full painting by the end of the week, exploring both figuration and abstraction.

A cultural mediation session will present Tansey’s work alongside that of other late 20th-century figurative artists, helping participants understand how painting has reinvented itself throughout the history of art.

A visit to the Museum of Fine Arts will allow the group to view Action Painting II, a major work by the artist featured in the permanent collection.

This week encourages children to explore color, visual storytelling, and the reappropriation of images, fostering the development of a personal and thoughtful pictorial universe.