Art, Affect and Neurodiversity

I’ve decided that I want to paint portraits for other neurodiverse people. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how my work reflects my neurotype and it definitely does but I think I need to build on that a bit. I for example did a recent series of paintings where I painted portraits on slabs of wood. I liked the idea of being able to see the materials. With my paintings you’re not going to look at them and think they’re a photo and I like that. I wanted to take that a step further, this isn’t an abstract flat surface that you’re supposed to pretend isn’t there, its a lump of wood, a very obvious lump of wood, I think that’s interesting. And still, I found myself drifting and starting to loose my enjoyment of painting. Ideas are all well and good aren’t they but I need that flow, I need that hyperfocus. I decided that I would paint a large vibrant portrait on a black background similar to the ones I’d been painting last year and I got this rush of familiar euphoria, my movements felt right, I couldn’t stop smiling as I was painting. Only when the subject of the painting, another neurodiverse person pointed it out did I have a little lightbulb moment, “good to try something but change isn’t always the best”. That was the feeling! Like settling into the film you’ve watched weekly since you were a child; joyous, comforting, familiar, freeing. Experimenting can be fun but so can doing the stuff you love!

As I say then, I want to paint other neurodiverse people. I want to do this in part because I get a lot from interacting with other neurodiverse people. They often end up identifying things about me or my work that I would never have been able to spot. I also want this project to be a love letter to my comrades. I think the way I paint is fairly vibrant and striking and I like the idea of them, as well as being reflections of my own interests, being a celebration of the person being painted and a community more broadly. There’s also something about neurodiverse representation that I’ve been thinking about. There not much that doesn’t seem to boil down to fairly reductive stereotypes and ends up, well intentioned as it sometimes can be, dripping with ableism. I like the idea of explicitly neurodivergent art, by and for neurodiverse people where that is baked into the brushstrokes and not demonstrated through a series of tropes.