Angela Gentleman, art teacher at Heron Bay Primary School, is very busy mentoring Van Goghs of the future. "We have some remarkable talent here,'' she said. The school participates in the Newspapers in Education pilot programme coordinated by Ron Lightbourne of The Royal Gazette . Twice a week he selects articles for students to read.

A couple of weeks ago he chose a feature article by Kim Dismont Robinson entitled, "Guest Speaker shares insights on art's most famous failure.'' It was about Van Gogh and the article stimulated a lot of interest and discussion.

The art class did some Van Gogh research using encyclopaedias and computers.

Mr. Lightbourne went to the National Gallery and borrowed a couple of books on Van Gogh, along with a Van Gogh poster and video.

The students looked at his paintings in the book and then viewed the video and decided they would like to paint in an impressionist style. The paintings took four lessons to complete and they chose to write about the experience. Some of their comments were: "I thought it was horrible that Van Gogh shot himself with a gun. He must have felt a lot of pain to do that,'' said Kryshae Furbert.

"I think that Van Gogh was a very strange man. When I see his paintings I wonder why no one bought them,'' said Cheyenne Trott.

"I thought it was sad that Van Gogh died so young and did not know how good he was,'' said Lindsey Walker.

"The video was a good inspiration to paint. I learned that painting is not just what you see. It is also what you think and feel about something,'' said Phillip Warner.

"I think the painting I did was fantastic because I did not have to fill in all the spaces and did not have to paint the picture exactly how it is in real life. I could use my own ideas,'' concluded Aaron Moniz.

Artists: Van Gogh students (left to right:) Karrita Smith, 10, Rafael Araujo, 11, and Cheyenne Trott.