A beautiful life

Every week in a Christchurch community arts centre, Joanne McGimpsey uses paint and paper to communicate a remarkable inner world. HILAIRE CAMPBELL reports.

She writes her name, carefully. Joanne Lynne McGimpsey. Age 39. She's profoundly deaf so communication is difficult, but watching her paint is a pleasure.

She is also autistic, a learning disability which, when combined with her deafness, affects her ability to empathise with other people. But her paintings are full of feeling and much more than just a catalogue of her experiences. A rabbit, drawn with unusual vigour, is the one that bit her - and there's the mark to prove it on the back of her hand. The cigarette, flaming red, is there because she smoked once, and got a mighty telling off. The icecream, dripping with flavour, is just all those good things in life. For McGimpsey the miracle occurs every Thursday at Floyds Creative Arts in Christchurch, using house paint straight from the pot.

"Joanne has two distinct styles," tutor Joyce Gunther says.

"When she's calm, she paints a single object; but other works are saturated with images which represent a busyness in her mind."

Unlike others, Gunther says she is open to suggestion.

"Joanne is experimenting with texture, and using more contrast so shapes stand out. But it's her work."

Her paintings number in their hundreds; you can see them all for sale on the walls. McGimpsey looks at them and bursts out laughing; her cheeks are as pink as the puppies in her picture. Tiny unformed things, dozens of them, on a purple hillside jammed with flowers and claws and walking boots and icecreams and rowing boats and a razor- toothed rabbit, all bricked off by a castle with a little hole for arrows. Is this a Sunday picnic or a shootout? She doesn't know, can't tell, but this is her life, packed in pictures. Her illustrations are her way of relating to the world.

Her mother, Janet, has a tale of her own about the time she made McGimpsey wild.

"She drew a dog with the most ferocious teeth; they were meant for me. I tell you, a picture of Joanne's paints a thousand words."

McGimpsey was born at Burwood Hospital on November 11, 1970, a pretty baby with big brown eyes.

There's a photo of her one year on, with hair which is unbelievably bouffant; McGimpsey says she drew it in herself.

"She has never stopped," her mother says. "Her art is everywhere. Even overseas."

At Van Asch School for the Deaf, McGimpsey made furniture; later, she sewed from her own patterns. Janet McGimpsey recalls a stunning dress - with a different front and back.

At Kilmarnock Enterprises, she made woollen blankets and scarves which she sold at Ballantynes - Joanne McGimpsey shrieks and holds her nose; she hates the smell of wool.

She has been in sheltered living since she turned 21. Roger Wheeler, a caregiver, knows her well.

"You can't typecast Joanne. She's a loner; she's a social butterfly. She's a cartoonist, and she caricatures people. She doesn't care what people think, she's a true artist."

Her mother says she gets her gift from her granddad, a landscape painter who had "the same eye for detail."

McGimpsey became a regional finalist for the IHC Telecom Art Awards in 2008 and 2009. Looking at these two works, it's the strong colour which strikes you first.

The subject matter, a hilarious combination of exotic animals playing home and family, is well composed. There are amusing scale changes - a mouse's ear the size of a Sky dish, and a nice sense of movement, with animals entering the frame from both sides. Their behaviour is interesting; they smile and grin and wink; McGimpsey has them engaging in ways supposedly beyond her reach.

The judges' comments are worth noting. Free-spirited, spontaneous, deeply personal. Karl Maughan, a painter of flowers and gardens, described the standard as "very high, with little concern for convention. The art work comes from a headspace where Picasso was always trying to be".

It comes naturally to McGimpsey. She has all these beautiful thoughts in her head, and she just paints them.

* Hilaire Campbell is a Christchurch freelance writer.

Floyds Creative Arts is the largest community creative space in New Zealand. It describes itself as "providing an outlet for people to find a balance in their lives through the medium of art. It is inherently therapeutic and meaningful, provides cultural, life contributions and access to the wider community".

Established in 1975, it is administered by the Floyds Creative Arts Charitable Trust, "to recognise creativity, according dignity, honouring, nurturing and tutoring each individual through the arts".

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