Pathways
This year I decided to do voluntary art workshops with different groups of people. Local artist Wendy Daws gave me the opportunity to participate in a workshop funded by Pathways to Inclusion for autistic people and those with learning disabilities.
I was working with Michael who is visually impaired. Despite his visual impairment he is a talented artist with a flair for handling materials in a sensitive and uninhibited way. He produces ‘naïve’ style, ‘outsider’ looking work, seemingly produced through an indifference to outcomes (or a fearless give-it-a-go approach) allowing his joy in both materials and process to have full sway. His sketch book is bursting with drawings including self portraits, animals, pints of beer and plates of grilled food. Those are the pictures I remember the most.
Working together over several weeks, we used his sketch book material to generate some 2D and 3D pieces.
I mixed some colours and he painted. I occasionally guided his hand, where he couldn’t see the edges/borders of the paper for example. In the painting below we cut up a tracing of one of his portrait sketches into jigsaw like pieces, jumbled up the shapes and re-arranged them on a fresh piece of paper to produce an abstracted image; like a broken mirror version of the portrait. Then Michael drew round the shapes in black marker pen and built up the colour on the face and background:
He later entered his portrait into a competition with MCCH and won first prize: http://www.mcch.co.uk/News/general-news/stop-press-mcch-has-got-talent.aspx
The end of the project was marked by an exhibition held at the Tourist Information Centre, Rochester.
After the project was over Wendy invited me to participate in another workshop with Kent Association for the Blind. As part of this project an exhibition of group members’ and volunteers’ work was held at Rochester Cathedral.
Michael also got involved with the ‘Eyes Wide Open’ project. Working with another helper this time, he drew this portrait in pastels for the exhibition:
In hindsight it seems that the experience of working with Michael inspired the piece that I made for this exhibition – it continues in the vein of cut out assembled shapes and the use of black lines for emphasis:
