ABSTRACT
I have argued that a family of expressive and representational modes generated in infancy interact together to form internal descriptions of reality and the basis of representational thought. The actions children perform upon visual media may seem random and unpredictable, until one views these as dynamic systems. These dynamic systems guide the child’s search of the environment for certain forms and relationships. Part of the problem in identifying the meaning of this art of children has been one of definitions. The unquestioned assumption that the development of visual representation is a form of progress from chaotic, meaningless beginnings to pictures of recognizably three-dimensional objects in an unambiguously articulated space, has concealed the uses to which young children put visual media. Ironically, this assumption has also masked the process through which some children do map depth relations onto the drawing surface.
