Modern Dutch Masters

 (First draft of an introduction to Justin’s forthcoming book of drawings)

Justin was born 15 years ago last week. In the days that followed his birth and subsequent diagnosis as a child with Down Syndrome, we were given or sent all manner of information, stories and reflections—from affected parents, organizations, and public health workers—aimed at easing our initial distress and confusion, and preparing us for some of the challenges ahead. (At that time, we only saw challenge, restrictions, constraints, attenuation: his life (and ours) would inevitably be not just different from, but “less than”, what we might otherwise have hoped for. At the same time, our duty of care was extended, or so we imagined, from the standard two score years of contemporary middle class parenthood to an indefinite sentence: life without parole.

One of the pieces we received at that time was a short homily by Emily Perl Kingsley titled ‘Welcome to Holland’. Written for new parents of children with special needs, Kingsley draws an analogy to the travelers who, having made extensive preparations for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy to realize stored-up dreams of glorious architecture, exquisite cuisine, sunblessed piazze, transcendent grace, instead find themselves disembarking the aircraft in the inauspicious grey dawn of Amsterdam Schiphol (“There’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.”)

Kingsley’s lesson, of course, is that Holland—by which she means all of The Netherlands—has just as much to offer as any more popular tourist destination, it simply takes some getting used to. As does supporting a child with special needs. Yet, whilst the analogy seems on point at first blush—and did provide some consolation at the time—the identification of children with special needs with Holland is ultimately invidious, notwithstanding the writer’s good intentions.

‘Welcome to Holland’ is open to two kinds of criticism. The first (noted here), is that it makes light of the many negative consequences facing families with a newborn special needs baby: shock, grief, guilt (at grief), shame (in some cultures), anger, self-pity; then, for many, the acute emotional, physical, often financial, challenges of dealing with immediate medical care; later still, the practical, social and educational difficulties of supporting a non-typical child. These challenges result not infrequently in family breakdown, where one of the parents walks away. Kingsley’s Holland may be '…just a different place', but there is nothing ‘just’ about raising a non-typically-developing child.

On the other hand, to other parents such as ourselves, ‘Welcome to Holland’ is a poor parable for opposing reasons. Some of these are peculiar to us, others more general. We are extremely fortunate, for example, that Justin had no perinatal medical problems—in particular, no cardiac issues—that often affect children with Down Syndrome, and that he has been as physically healthy as any typically developing child up to now. As significantly, he has no behavioral or linguistic conditions (mutism, ASD characteristics) that can also affect DS children: on the contrary, he is as thoughtful, equable, diligent, energetic, and considerate as one could wish for. Hence, in this regard—and in retrospect—Justin’s birth was as good as any Italian sunrise.

Which brings me to the main criticism of Kingsley’s story, namely, that right to the end of the piece she considers that Italy would have been better (‘And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned"...And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away…"). In this, she is wholly mistaken: after 15 years, I’m sure that as a family we are all in a much, much better place thanks to Justin, such that Holland is where we were meant to be.

Now, it is a necessary truth of the immaterial world that all metaphors fail, that they are doomed to diverge from what they represent. Perhaps we should not be too harsh on the writer, for doing her best. But the interest and value of any representation lies not in the accuracy of the replication, but in the nature of the divergence: ‘the distance between.’ I am not an artist, nor yet a qualified critic—until Justin started drawing three or four years ago I had no particular interest in the visual arts—but it seems to be that the same applies to Art: it is in the distance between representation and reality that the artist lives and in which they express their talent; the art lies mostly in the process, the process in the interstices, the drawing or painting is merely a derivative sign.

This book presents a sample of the results of Justin’s engagement with drawing over the last three years. From the time he could walk, he has been active and creative in many other areas as well—basketball, contemporary dance, (more recently) boxing, modeling—but only art leaves this kind of record. Almost all of these drawings were created in ‘homework time’: the hour or so between coming home from school and supper time. Justin draws continuously while watching YouTube videos; each drawing takes 2-7 days, after which he immediately starts again, never looking back. There is no apparent sense of achievement here, or even accomplishment: he has finished when no white space remains. I don’t pretend to know what the drawings mean to him, though I do know, from reactions to his first exhibition, and to Facebook posts, that they have meaning to others (“Dull would he be of soul who could pass by…”, as Wordsworth wrote of another scene); his chosen colors, shapes and emergent patterns are as involved and evocative as they are deliberate. What I am also sure about is that they radiate joy: at times subdued, at times exuberant, but always positive, and contained.

Finally, the artist that Justin’s work is most reminiscent of, at least during a certain period, is another Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian (Paul Klee comes a close second). This is surely a coincidence, but it is a very convenient one: I will leave it here, and let the drawings speak for themselves.