Visual Arts

Outside the Lines: Self Portraits by Artists with Disabilities

Artist Statements

Brice Canyon
As someone who can pass for a normal, healthy, white male on the streets of Vancouver, I have had a difficult time finding ways to express and represent the experience of having AIDS and how that acts as a disability. Having lived with the spectre of HIV/AIDS since 1987, it has become a part of my daily reality, so much so that I can honestly say one or two days can go by where I don’t even think of it.

Through the mystery of modern medicine I am alive, after a two year period where death seemed imminent. This is not to say that is no longer important to me, but in fact it has become such a part of me, it is only when it is called into question by others or outside situations that I have reason to reflect upon it.

In my art work, using at different times both video and Xerox, I have been tempted less to speak directly about AIDS per se, than I have to deal with the surrounding issues. The stigma that is attached to sexually transmitted disease and the confusion of information available in AIDS/HIV seemed to me more pressing.

Later I became more interested in the human body as an aspect of nature, and how that related to death and decay. Now, working collaboratively with my boyfriend Claude Perreault, an artist living and working in Montreal, we are focusing on the strength and courage that results from an emotional and spiritual union. The fact that he is HIV negative points to the levels of trust and intimacy that are needed as part of living with an ongoing disease.

This portrait reflects the positive aspects emotional and spiritual support have on healing and continuing with life in the face of a disability.

Karen Chapnick
As an undergraduate at UCLA, I took mainly painting and drawing classes. During my last year, I saw a wonderfully exuberant fibre exhibition which inspired me to take my first fibre class.

Starting in graduate school and continuing for several years after moving to Vancouver in 1976, I created large wall pieces of hand-dyed and braided sisal. In 1985 I reintroduced painting into my work – braiding together strips of painted fabric. Although still abstract, the pieces started to have allusions to landscape.

In 1988, the MS that I’d had for 15 years forced me to stop working in fibre. I became much weaker and could no longer make such big pieces that were so labour intensive. I started painting exclusively – on paper using acrylic paints. Also, the weakness in my right hand forced me to paint with my left hand. During that year, I started to use a wheelchair.

My first major series of paintings on paper was inspired by a dream in which I found myself lost in a dangerous cave and unable to find my way out. This led me to create 15 paintings/collages based on labyrinths. I am now making more abstract paintings.

So, my physical limitations restarted my life as a painter. I am quite happy now being a painter again.

Dominic Fetherston
I See: The hooks of the Ministry of Health – a metaphor for the added stress imposed by an unduly long and convoluted application process for exemption from being arrested for using medical marijuana and by a media leak of my personal information by Health Canada.

You see: From outside myself I see others as they observe me. I watch as marijuana provides relief from the intraocular pressure of pigmentary dispersion glaucoma, while others do the same.

No One Sees: There are parts of ourselves and others we may never know or understand. There will be those who refuse to see. We put bags over our heads when we deny what works.

Doreen Finnegan
This panel portrait provoked a high level of anxiety. To examine self when more comfortably the self is consciously avoided, proved to be more than a challenge.

In this painting both the process and the result present a metaphor for the struggle of living with an invisible learning disability. Several traditional portraits were rendered. Subsequently the paintings were cut up into pieces from which the 9 mini works originated. Fragments became collage which inspired each piece. The splintering of the original 15’ square into 9 5”X5” squares reflects the scattered shifts which constantly occur with ADD (attention deficit disorder).

The size related to a sense of obscurity. Shifting from representational to abstract adds to the confusion almost always felt. Dyslexia creates a challenge in processing bits of information. Attempts are constantly being made to make sense of the world, while remaining mentally fractured. The struggle to formulate visual cohesion also speaks of desire for external approval. The words of childhood echo still: STUPID, AREN’T YOU LISTENING? TRY JUST A LITTLE HARDER, PAY ATTENTION,……LEAVE THE CLASS……AGAIN. Then there was living with the quiet rage of always being misunderstood.

My purpose for entering into this project is both creative and educational. There remains a lot of misunderstanding around various learning differences. If as the viewing public, you suspect you or your children may have such a problem, please research solutions and consult professionals for help. Living in silence isn’t an option.

Bernadine Fox
Invisible…
Fallaciously dubbed “Chronic Fatigue”

Headaches, migraines, back, muscle and bone pain.
Legs lose a connection to my brain, becoming painfully clumsy and stiff.
Knees threaten to collapse.
Each miniscule joint in my hands and feet is identified by radiating agony.

My brain lapses into reading words or phrases inside-out. But worse, it attempts interpretation of same. Words, written or spoken, are confused with those from a similar region in my brain. My life is muddled.

I stand exhausted, struggling to keep my eyes open. My arms poised to reach, to hold, to pull, to push, to touch… and then, somewhere at the end of this day I must recall and perform “sleep”. My disease is this 15” cube with its inflexible sides too narrow to steady oneself upon.

As I gravitate between permitting implicit obscurity or insisting on explicit clarity, I know it is I who confuse the world around me. And, therefore, as in any illness, I am the dead weight I carry.

Take 5
The painting reminds me of an urban carnival of some sort, one with many fantastic rides, and many peculiar faces to see… Come one, come all, ride the ferris wheel, right downtown Vancouver! Come see the manic boy fly down the stairs in his wheelchair!! Watch the letter K do a belly dance right before your eyes and witness the superhuman strength of the letter T! Witness the hybrid letter E transform from human to reptile right before your eyes! Watch in amazement as the letter A performs feats of contortion!

These are all themes that I imagine while creating the forms in the painting. I like the forms to be playful in shape, and vibrant in colour. As far as the painting being a self portrait, it has several abstract likenesses to me. I have always considered myself to be each of the letters, in different moods.

I decided to minimize the use of the suggested 15 inch square, since the painting is significantly larger in size. The ubiquitous symbol of the wheelchair person (myself) flying down a set of stairs, sets a tone that even the most outrageous acts, (a person flying down the stairs in a chair), can manifest through great determination.

The defiant nature of graffiti art sets the stage for a “disabled” artist to lash out at a society that completely ignores him. Through my artistic expressions I attempt to engage the public in a discussion about public art, while challenging their idea of what a “disabled” person is and is capable of by pushing my own limitations.

Kelly Haydon
I have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) which means I spend most of my life in bed. I experience severe exhaustion, weak muscles, lots of pain and mental fogging. Living with M.E. is extremely difficult but with brilliant moments of painting I can manage.

What I cannot handle is the extra oppressive load society deems it necessary to burden me with. I am socially isolated as I am stuck in but also have a vast gap existing between me and those around me; most underestimate the severity of my illness.

I must also live with the constant insecurity about income, housing and homecare. I need to be in a quiet place but poverty means I have no control over where I live. Further, due to the lack of affordable housing, there is the threat of homelessness. My future income (welfare) is subject to the whims of politicians, as is homecare. Thousands have already had the homecare they depend on eliminated.

OUR SOCIETY IS DISABLING
OUR SOCIETY IS INVALID.

Alvin Hipke
This is a self-portrait of me. I have a blue shirt and blue eyes. I like the forest with trees. I painted the trees first with yellow and orange leaves. I also like painting pictures of houses, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. I like being an artist. It’s better than farming because it’s nice and quiet when I paint. I was born and raised in Saskatchewan and my family did lots of farming and my sister was an artist too.

Shaira Holman
I had this piece of mirror. I measured all its sides. It was (24+1)X(8+7+20). I wanted to use it. It was perfect.

That’s the middle piece.

I had these other pieces of mirror that I was using as test strips – and they were lying beside each other while I was coating them. They were beautiful the way the three looked together.

A triptych.

I started thinking about different sides of self (inside & out) and of the whole.

I hate writing artist’s statements. I’m not disabled. I went to ‘special’ schools and all that, took tests over and over. I’m a bad speller but a good driver, fast reflexes, sharp spatial sense.

I just have a hard time with some things.

My work isn’t about technique or the perfect moment. I work in layers, seeing different things at the same time, more like driving than reading.

According to the UN definition, according to doctors and teachers I am a person with a disability. Am I rebelling, hiding, in denial, refusing labels, being difficult? Is it pride, shame, laziness? I don’t know. The process of making art doesn’t culminate in answers, it just makes it so I can see different things at the same time.

Emma Kivisild
Messages in bottles travel great distances in time and space, very slowly, at the mercy of the elements, to no specific receiver.

My project begins with 15”X15” squares of paper, cut into smaller squares and inscribed with messages – from the mundane to the philosophical. Each message goes into a glass bottle, in a glass enclosure. The result is a body of glass, at once strong and fragile, simultaneously saying everything, and unable to express any of it.

My disability – Multiple Sclerosis – is a disease of the nervous system where the deterioration of the myelin sheath means that nervous messages travel slowly or not at all. I am in this network of demylenated nerves. I am waiting for them to get going with their job of sending messages properly or accurately, but they just don’t.

This is where I live.

Velveeta Krisp

never
finish even if you are finished
never finish even when you are finished

In this video
I am performing my mind
Interrupted
I am performing for you
Running to keep up
And for me
Trying to get it
What is it
Chicken pecks the ground
fifteen times
Whatever it is
I don’t get it

this chicken will not stop pecking
until the tape ends
I will not stop running
until the tape ends
My mind races, and is
never finished

Claire Kujundzic
Many years of working with various tools and media left me with hand, wrist and shoulder injuries. Despite a variety of splints, medications and physical therapies, the condition has worsened, most recently because of my refusal to give up using wax crayons, a method that requires a great deal of hard, repetitive pressure. Ironically, though my work was largely of free, flying women, I was feeling “frozen”.

When I moved from Vancouver to Wells in 1995 with my partner Bill to start a gallery, I got even more scared of changing media. Wax resist was unique, sold well and I had refined the technique in ways I loved. And though I’d painted murals and a few small canvases, I’d never learned any painting techniques. What if I fell flat on my face?

I’d been stuck for three years when kickstART! got me going. The restriction of 15”X15” square gave me something to fight against. I “stretched” the box, keeping the perimeter dimensions of 60”, and tried using unfamiliar materials like foam core, photocopies, wire, acrylic transfer and handmade paper. It’s unpolished, but I’m painting, I’m cutting, I’m playing with wire and paper, and maybe, just maybe, I’m free!

More all-text artist statements from Outside the Lines