The following article was written by Carrie L. Estrella for the Rahr-West Art Museum “Art Forward” series.
April is World Autism Month, a month dedicated to understanding, accepting, and empowering people with autism worldwide. The month kicks off with World Autism Awareness Day on April 2nd. Established by the United Nations in 2007, World Autism Awareness Day seeks to raise awareness about people on the autism spectrum throughout the world.
Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a term used to describe a group of neurological conditions that impact the brain’s ability to process social cues. This affects the way one communicates and interacts with other people; it also changes how these people view the world around them. As a spectrum disorder, autism impacts individuals differently. Each person with autism has a distinct set of strengths and challenges – some people have mild symptoms and require less support, while other people need or benefit from lifelong care.
When speaking of autism, society often tends to focus on the social and medical accommodations needed, forgetting that there are many people with ASD that have also displayed amazing talents and abilities in many areas of life, including the visual arts. With April only a couple days away, it seems appropriate to use this week’s Art Forward article to highlight several contemporary visual artists known to have autism.
- Stephen Wiltshire – a cityscape artist with a particular talent for drawing lifelike, highly detailed representations of cities, even after only observing them briefly – for example, creating an 18 foot panoramic drawing of the NYC skyline from memory after just a 20-minute helicopter ride.
Brooklyn Bridge, New York City by Stephen Wiltshire
- Ping Lian Yeak – a young autistic savant from Australia who creates beautiful acrylic, oil, watercolor, charcoal, ink (and sometimes combining multiple media) spirited images of animals and great architectural sites.
My Dog II, painted at age 11 by Ping Lian Yeak
Shanghai, 2020 by Ping Lian Yeak
- Nadia Chomyn – an amazing sketch artist (who amassed hundreds of accurately proportional, realistic-looking drawings between the ages of 3-9) illustrating imagery from storybooks read aloud to her. In the late 70’s Walter Cronkite took interest in her extraordinary talent and pursued making a film about her. Nadia suddenly stopped drawing at the age of 9 and died at the age of 48 in 2015.
A horse and rider drawn by Nadia Chomyn when she was five
- Henriett Seth F. – a.k.a. “Rain Girl” (a reference to “Rain Man” for her extraordinary abilities), Henriett is an accomplished Hungarian author, poet, musician and artist. In September 2005, Henriett was asked to participate in a documentary titled Freedom of Speech, a film in which she discusses her autism and her artwork.
According to the Autism Society, there is no known single cause of autism. It is generally accepted that autism is caused by differences in brain structure or function and brain scans have shown variations in the shape and structure of the brain in people with autism compared to neurotypical development. While no one gene has been identified as the cause of autism, it seems plausible that some people are simply born with a susceptibility to autism, the exact “trigger” of which still alludes researchers.
It wasn’t until the early 1900’s that autistic behaviors were even documented in medical journals and not until 1980 that autism was actually recognized as a separate neurodevelopmental disorder. That being said, ASD certainly existed in the world before the medical community officially acknowledged it and there are many famous artists who are believed to have been on the autism spectrum – Michelangelo, Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Warhol, Charles Schulz… just to name a few.
Autism has proven itself not to be a barrier to creativity, perhaps autism can even be considered a catalyst of the creative mind. Gregory Keyes, a science fiction writer, was quoted to have said “The world can be seen from so many different angles. Each of us is born seeing the world in a different way, and each moment we live shapes our eyes and hearts differently.” World Autism Month is a perfect time to remember this quote and to appreciate how the world of art has been shaped by those who see it differently from us.
