Artworks

My work is inevitably influenced by that of my non-verbal autistic daughter, Grace, as she expresses herself through drawing and painting. When she was diagnosed, some medical professionals still subscribed to Bruno Bettelheim’s notorious Refrigerator Mother theory, blaming a mother’s supposed frigidity and detachment for the child’s disassociation. This pernicious “mother blame” brought home to me the fundamental male bias of supposedly objective systems of explanation. 

 

Since then, however, we have been comparatively fortunate. Early on, I discovered ways in which mothers of different backgrounds have encountered and dealt with the stigma of having a child with autism—particularly the ways race and class stereotyping inform attitudes that even determine the initial diagnosis. However, accounts of other artist-parents, and their creative relationships with their children have inspired me.

 

Grace and I have developed a kind of shared voice in a collaborative process that creates a safe conceptual space. It has provided her with an opportunity to develop a productive and recursive self-expression—sometimes figurative, but always with a sophisticated sense of color. We share images and motifs, often cutting and pasting. Sometimes I am in control; at other times her motifs act as prompts and the process itself controls me. The final work is collaborative. 

 

Although the media images of autism and its struggles do increase the general understanding of this population, they can often be alarming and encourage a perception of its members as distinctly “other.” Under Grace’s influence I emphasize the positive, working to explore the relationship between the figurative, expressive, and purely visual, staying open to creative possibility in a way that is fundamentally productive. It’s a difficult balancing act, but it seems as if Grace is always about to offer another lesson. I just have to keep my eyes open.