A three-year-old girl suffering from autism made a splash in the art world with her unusual painting, which was sold at one of the London auctions.
Iris Grace Halmshaw began painting as a therapy, but when her parents decided to put the work up for sale, to their surprise, they helped out $ 1200 for one of the paintings. In addition, the painting helped improve the teen's condition - she now plays more with her parents and looks much happier …
Her mother Arabella Carter-Johnson of Market Harborough in Leicestershire said she received positive reviews about her daughter's paintings after posting the photo on Facebook.
“About three months ago we realized that Iris is actually very talented. We started getting requests to buy her paintings, and one of the drawings was sold at a charity auction in London for $ 1,200,”Arabella says.
The girl's father, Peter-John Halmshaw, added: “When she started doing art therapy, we thought it was amazing, but we are her parents, and everything she does feels like that. But later other people started to say that it was really great."
To date, the family has sold eight Iris paintings, and plans to sell photocopies of particularly successful ones. A three-year-old girl who cannot speak was diagnosed with autism last year after her parents noticed that she rarely makes eye contact with them. They tried many different therapies to help her learn to communicate.
“We started with play therapy, then we worked with horses and took music therapy, redefined nutrition and tried many other ways. However, it was the painting that brought the greatest impact,”says Arabella.
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Iris's talent was discovered a few months ago, when the girl and her mother made the first attempts to draw something.
Mikaela Butter, director of the Center for the Arts at the University of Leicester, said: "Iris Grace's paintings show that disability is not a barrier to creativity."
The family hopes to host an exhibition in London to showcase Iris' paintings to a wider audience. All profits from the sale are used to buy everything needed for painting and pay bills for treatment.