Who’s Pascal? (Qui est Pascal?)
Pascal has been a painter for over a decade. His work is large-scale and abstract, built from plaster and pigment, made in a real studio with real materials. He's also a father, and, somewhat unusually for a dad, he has a natural, unhurried calm around small kids that makes them want to sit down next to him and start making something.
Painting with Pascal started from a simple observation: most art classes for toddlers hand kids a small canvas, a small brush, and a lot of instructions. Pascal wanted to offer something different: his kind of scale, his kind of freedom, brought down to a size a 2 or 3 or 4-year-old could step into
The Idea ( L'idée )
Each class opens with a tiny lesson. Today it might be the color green (vert) or a wide brush, or paint mixed thick enough to hold its shape. Pascal demonstrates, narrating what he's doing as he does it. Then the lesson ends, and the canvas now belongs entirely to the kids.
This comes from a French parenting philosophy called the cadre — the frame. You set a clear boundary or limit, and inside that boundary, a child gets real freedom. Freedom that feels safe because the structure is there. That's the whole shape of a class: a few minutes of frame, then everything else is theirs.
French shows up throughout, just as how Pascal talks. A color, a word, said together, repeated until it's familiar. It's less a curriculum and more a texture kids pick up the way they'd pick it up from a French relative.
Paint with Pascal is the earliest chapter of a much longer relationship with art.
What a class looks like (Y'a quoi ici? )
Kids arrive, take off their shoes, and put on crocs and a smock (we provide these, to keep clothes nice and clean) a small ritual that signals they're stepping into a different kind of space. A short circle with a few mantras follows, then the tiny lesson, then free painting to music on a canvas far larger than what most kids ever get to work on …big enough that eight to twelve kids can paint side by side!
Nothing from class goes home. The paintings aren't kept, photographed, or held up as things to be proud of in a particular way: the point is the making, not the object left over afterward. Parents are welcome to stay and watch, or simply drop off and pick up later.
Some things can be taught later in life, but an ease with art, a real comfort is something that roots best when it starts early.
The Studio ( L’atelier )
Classes are held outdoors, in a space shaped almost like a long room… one wall is the house, the other is covered in California Jasmine, and shade sails overhead keep it cool. A real backyard turned into a real studio.