The experience of working in an institution for autistic children this summer and the possibility of art therapy gave me the idea to work on an illustration book dedicated to autistic children. I'm doing research and trying to figure out how art could help the autistic children to develop intellectually and socially and grow to be more comfortable living in this world.
Children With Autism Need Structure
Structure makes things predictable, reduces stress, confusion, anxiety, and behavior problems. It also builds on the child’s strengths which are the desire for routine, predictability, organization, comfort with repetitive tasks, and their need to finish things. Structure can also help lead to independence.
I have also read about a passage about how autistic people have sporadic visual focus points when they look at an image compared to non-autistic people. Some of the most amazing art pieces created by people with autism share two main ideas: 1) There seem to be a lot of repetition of shapes and colors/ patterns in their paintings. 2) There are lots of focus points that make the viewers' eyes go all round the image. Here are some examples that I found.
Stephen Wiltshire is an autistic artist who draws and paints detailed cityscapes. I actually saw one of his huge NYC landscape drawings hanging at JFK and was so drawn into it while I was waiting in lines to go through the custom. Yet at that time, I did not know it was painted by Wiltshire, but I found it interesting and different from most works I have seen.
My plan is to create a series of art works from the patterns with which autistic people are familiar with and then gradually to one single focal point with other possible distractions. I hope that my illustration series could make the autistic children and teenagers grow to be able to concentrate and more comfortable with distractions.
Links of autism visual focus: http://bbrfoundation.org/discoveries/what-do-autistic-people-see-understanding-visual-focus-in-autism-as-a-path-to-better
Links of the two artists mentioned: www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/
irisgracepainting.com/
