High School Artist Creates Sensory Painting

Justice Altenbaumer, Junior High Editor

From late February to early March, 10th-grade student Katie Forgy spent time creating a large canvas inspired by different emotions. She worked with Ms. Forbeck, a K-3 special education teacher on the OGS side, and the two began to talk about how art can help students with their feelings. On the morning of March 10th, Katie took the canvas down to the kids. 

She wanted to make a painting that everyone could enjoy and feel happy with, so she decided to make a scenery painting with different textures that people could feel. She says, “I know that we have some kids here at school that have some scenery issues, so I decided to donate it to the grade school side because I thought the children would like it. I just like the fact that I know people are happy because of my art.” 

She enjoyed making the canvas and she enjoyed seeing how many textures she could come up with. Her favorite part of making the painting is making all of the colors on it. The prompt of the project was emotions, so she decided to do an abstract painting, and she started to finger paint with the colors she was feeling that day. She used different things like flour, sand, shaving cream, and glue to make different textures in the paint. She even added some googly eyes as her own personal touch to it.