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Home>Service> Awardees of Fervent Global Love of Lives Award> 17th Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2014> Wang Yao-Chang—Multi-Handicapped Aboriginal Painter
[Self-taught Artist, Art Brut Pioneer]

I love to paint.
I love to brandish my brush.
The rhythm makes me happy.
The colors and the lines are captivating.
I love to paint.Every picture is a window to the mind.
Through it, I see the outer world.
Through it, others get a glimpse into my inner world.
Painting is my only hobby.Please grant me a life of painting.
Please grant me a future.
—Wang Yao-Chang
 
A Self-taught Taiwanese Aboriginal Painter
Wang Yao-Chang, diagnosed with intellectual disability, language disorder, and autism at the age of three, was born in a minority Bunun aboriginal tribe.
 
His father passed away when he was still young. His mother had severe schizophrenia, his brother had moderate intellectual disability, and his elder sister had gone missing. The entire family were living off government subsidy.
 
Fortunately, Wang met Mr. Yeh Shih-Yuan, a teacher at Kaohsiung Municipal Nanzih Special School. He is Wang’s mentor, and has been instructing him for eleven years. His efforts have led the boy to find a path in life—a life of painting. Wang has painted over a thousand Art Brut, each with a story of its own.
 
Art Brut Nature Painting
Through the art of painting, Yao-Chang portrays the beauty of the world and brightens up his own. Where there were once shades, the color of sunshine and hope is. Wang’s remarkable efforts have made him a fitting awardee of the Chou Ta-Kuan Foundation’s 17th Annual Global Love of Life Award.
 
God’s child born with a parrot’s tongue
Mr. Yeh said that Wang was often misunderstood or ridiculed for his immediate echolalia, a symptom of intellectual disability, language disorder, autism, among other multiple disabilities.
 
Yao-Chang’s mother once took him to see the doctor. Here’s what happened:
The doctor asked, “Where does it hurt?”
Wang replied, “Where does it hurt?”
“Tell me,” the doctor said.
“Tell me!” Wang replied.
The doctor got impatient. He thought the young man was deliberately looking for trouble.
“Just say it!” the doctor gazed at Wang fiercely and said.
“Just say it!” the boy replied nervously, and looked back at the doctor fiercely too. Being an aboriginal, he got big, round eyes with black pupils.
“Shut up!” Wang’s mother told her son.
“Shut up!” repeated Wang to the doctor.
Wang’s mother panicked and scolded her son, “Shut up, I say!”
And Wang turned to the doctor and shouted, “Shut up, I say!”
 
What this episode illustrates is that Wang never understood what was being said. He felt the tension and the anger of the adults, but he did not know what he did wrong. This kind of scenario has always been a frustration for Wang.
 
In the end, Wang’s mother showed him the “ultimatum” facial expression, and Wang finally did shut up. He was very receptive of his mother’s method of communication.
 
All Wang needs is some sympathy, less scolding; more soft words, fewer raised voices. 
 
Tolerance is What He Needs
Wang has a few odd behaviors, to be sure. He is afraid to touch a broom or a mop, because they are too dirty.
 
Wang is very sensitive. If someone blows up a balloon, or when a balloon flies over his head, he gets nervous. If someone plays with rubber bands near him, he becomes tense. It is as if the rubber bands are somehow connected to his nervous system.
 
Lights and noise put him on edge, too. Too much lighting bothers him. Raised voices and fights scare him.
 
There are people like Yao-Chang everywhere. All they need is some sympathy, respect and tolerance.
 
Forever Three-Year-Old
Mental retardation, low functioning and severe autism differentiate Wang from most people. He is like a time traveler, come to our age from 10,000 years ago. He is not burdened with conventions of our current society. He is full of vitality, imbued with the power of focus and observation which allow him to take great pleasure in painting.
 
Mr. Yeh checked Yao-Chang’s Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale in junior high. The results showed that he had middle to low spatial ability, and that’s it. He displayed in other aspects of the scale little to no aptitude.
 
Wang’s greater potential lies in the integration of the senses of sight and touch. His severe self-harm behavior taken into consideration, it is found that painting eases his mind and reduces the chances for him to become emotional and unstable.
 
Painting as an emotional outlet
Here’s how reciprocal inhibition works: When you are doing something that makes you happy, you won't have time to be angry about something else. Emotion-wise, you will remain positive-minded.
 
In the first semester, Mr. Yeh arranged for Yao-Chang to draw regularly. His references for drawing include photography magazines and famed works by Klimt, Van Gogh, and others. By the second semester, XXX knew that painting is a window to Yao-Chang, a window to learning. Through it, he gradually became aware of his self and learned to express himself, enhancing his overall development in a positive manner.
 
Strong and burly, Yao-Chang draws lines swiftly and accurately. He has a rhythm all his own. He brandishes the paint brush without a care in the world. Once he began painting, he would not stop till it's done. Yao-Chang is not driven by sense of achievement; nor does he care about "failure" as defined by the society. His is painting in its purest form—Art Brut.
 
The Republic and the Real World
Plato says that the best nation must be governed by philosophers. What if the world is ruled by the most imaginative artists? For Yao-Chang, he expresses his opinions through artistic creation. He builds for himself an ideal nation.
 
Wang’s creation seems to manifest his imagination. It is not from the real world, but an ideal form coming straight from his mind.
 
He first gives free rein to drawing with crayon pens. There seems to be no plain pattern, nor a beginning nor an end. He then employs watercolor to create intricate patterns that stand out visually.
 
Wang’s work does not exhibit dimension or depth. Animals, plants, human characters, and tools are drawn with lines on a single dimension. If we say Cubist works attempt to deconstruct cubic objects with a scientific perspective, then what Wang sets out to do is quite similar—he removes structure and reduces objects to one-dimensional image. It is especially remarkable as we are not sure what Wang can or cannot see with his eyes.
 
His process of “representing the real” produces a new perspective of the world, a landscape between the real and the ideal. Though what Wang does may not mean much to others, we are led to wonder if it isn’t a tentative answer to the debate between arts historians on how one should draw the line between “the real” and “the unreal”.
 
Art Brut, Nature’s Color
Anyone who has seen Wang’s work expresses surprise, enchanted by the lines that seem to extend infinitely, without beginning and end.
 
Once colored, the painting comes alive. Crayon lines seem to retreat behind the scenes, leaving faint tracks behind, thereby bringing forth the wholeness of the work.
 
Yao-Chang is especially adept at delineating flowers. They take on a hard, unbending image under the artist’s hand, exhibiting a sense of unrestrained freedom. Wang produces characters not dissimilar to the one-dimensional image characteristic of cubist works of deconstruction, sporting fantastic colors.