The artist and his artwork
Ever since my son Jonathan has been diagnosed as autistic, friends and relatives have asked me this question, “Does Jonathan have any savant skills?” I used to tell them that not all autists have savant skills. Perhaps they have been watching movies like “Rain Man” or “Mercury Rising” where autists were portrayed as having special skills like mathematics or were able to break complicated codes. But how I wished that Jonathan really have some sort of special skills. One thing which my wife Roselind and I noticed was that Jonathan was very good at doing jig saw puzzles. However other than that, as far as we could discern, Jonathan did not possess any savant skills.
Jonathan has very short attention span, so whenever we give him coloring pencils or crayon, he would simply scribble. Most of the time, he would just scribble without even looking. It really took a lot of time and effort for Jonathan to be able to concentrate on what he was drawing or coloring. Even now, his work is very erratic. At times he is able to concentrate for a short time and at most times his eyes are not looking at what his hands are doing. Despite that Jonathan has managed to produce a few interesting drawings. The drawings are unique and in some ways represent how he sees the world around him and his understanding of his environment.
I am very grateful that one of his drawings has been chosen by Spring, a shopping complex in Kuching to be reproduced and displayed on one of its fire doors. Jonathan was among one of the few students at the Kuching Autistic Association, whose artwork had been chosen. The Association and I are very thankful to Spring for its efforts to introduce the art work of autists to the community of Kuching. This will help to create more awareness about autism as well as some of the skills that autists have. Hopefully more corporations will joined in and society will be more understanding and willing to accept people with autism.
Cheers
Charles