Kevin looking at a painting that he helped Colin paint of Kevin painting

Colin's Perspective

    I find myself thinking on most Saturday mornings, before Kevin comes over to paint, "...last week was something else, I can only hope it falls together as well this time."  It always surprises me, the way our sessions go.  Usually I start with a specific plan, and quickly realize it must be discarded.  Recently, I've been trying to start with no plan at all, and discover that the session is even better than the last.  Kevin comes, expresses his desire to begin painting, and from there it all quite simply happens.  Kevin has his own internal motivation.  I simply go with it and give him the tools to make things happen.

    I'm not really Kevin's painting instructor.  I a clinical working for the Koegels' a the University of California Santa Barbara Autism Research and Training Center.  I've been helping Kevin with social skills.  When I first started working a the University and was reading up on the Koegels' methods and philosophy of treating children with autism, I couldn't help but smile.  Their basic intervention is call PRT - Pivotal Response Training.  It is behavior based, and as I found out, very intuitive.  The idea is to follow the child's natural interests and inclinations and to teach him/her certain skills within their self-chosen context.  Having studied fine arts in college and having spent two years in France painting and working with children, I could not have found a more appropriate job.

    So I am not Kevin's painting instructor.  I don't teach him how to mix colors, rather how to say "excuse me" when interjecting a comment.  I don't teach him the difference between a still life and a landscape or a Gauguin and a Cezanne.  Rather how to make eye contact with the person he is talking to or how to pause at the period when reading a sentence.  If we happen to be reading about the life of Van Gogh it is to help his comprehension.  However, if he asks me questions, I certainly try to answer them.  If he asks for help, I try to give it,  If he wants to tray a new idea, I let him try.

    From the first day I met him, he was determined to tackle the concept of photo-realism.  Photo-realism or "even-better-than-photo-realism" is his goal.  It is the land of perfections.  It's hard to know exactly what it means for him or why he is driven to reach its boundaries.  But it is his motivating source, and apparently one strong enough to take him to extraordinary places, extraordinarily fast.  His own momentum has paved the way for much improvement in social skills and academics.  But what I have noticed increasingly as the months have passed is his own joy and confidence bubbling out of him.  He has become his own little master.  And somewhere inside, he knows it.  He approaches the studio with force, and talks about his work with self-confidence.   

    Aside from these beautiful images he's been making, I've been blown away by his desire to know the history of art, and particularly, the personal story of its artists.  He was especially taken with Vincent van Gogh's life - his extreme defeats and successes.  One time we were painting Kevin's self-portrait along side that of Gauguin's - his favorite artist at the time.  In the background of Gauguin's painting was a painting of his sleeping wife - a painting within a painting.  As we started to paint this part, squinting at the small image, Kevin said he had a better idea.  He remembered looking at another, bigger, picture of the reclining woman and proceeded to flip right to the page (and it was a very thick book).  Apparently, during the previous week when I had lent him this book, he poured over all the pages, and seemed to have memorized every painting.  Often, it seems the roles are reversed.  Who is teaching who?

    Kevin's plan is to study painting in France and live for a time in Italy before settling down to work on "even-more-realistic-than-photo-realistic" paintings in collaboration with Gerhard Richter.

April 2005