Nadia Chomyn

Nadia Chomyn (24 October 1967 – 28 October 2015) was a British autistic artist who was born in Nottingham. Considered severely handicapped both intellectually and motorically, she is best known for her realistic drawings as a child prodigy, depicting mainly horses and roosters. Nadia's mastery of perspective, and her extremely rapid and precise line drawing from the age of three and a half, earned her the title of "autistic savant". She aroused interest in the anglophone media, psychiatry and art therapy publications in the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly with regard to the question of whether interventions for autistic children could lead to a parallel loss of other skills.

Nadia never used conventional spoken language, nor was she able to live independently. She was admitted to a specialized institute in early adulthood, and died of a short illness at the age of 48, in relative anonymity. Her drawings are now on display at the Bethlem Royal Archives and Museum in Beckenham, which manages the reproduction rights. They are classified as outsider art.

History

Early childhood All information about Nadia before the age of five years and three months comes from her mother's testimony. Nadia Chomyn was born in Nottingham on 24 October 1967, after an uncomplicated pregnancy and delivery. with a younger sister, Tania, and an older brother, Andrej. The parents usually spoke their mother tongue, Ukrainian, at home. Aneila soon noticed that Nadia was not developing like a typical baby, with great passivity and little muscle tone. Since Aneila returned to work, Nadia was regularly looked after by her paternal grandmother, She began drawing around the age of three and a half, after her mother returned home for a period of convalescence. When she was four and a half, a doctor advised her parents to place her in a special school for "slow trainee's". She refused to play with the other children's energetic games, Newson entrusted Nadia to one of his psychiatry students, Lorna Selfe, who followed her for five years, among other things as part of her master's degree, However, she witnessed a live demonstration, and compared Nadia's drawings to those of Leonardo da Vinci.

Nadia failed to cooperate with most of the tests Selfe wanted her to undergo IQ tests, language tests, etc., mastering, according to her, only a dozen words in English, fewer in Ukrainian, and exhibiting echolalia. According to Selfe, her ability to generalize and form object categories was "extremely limited". Her understanding of spoken language was assessed as equivalent to that of a six-month-old child. On the other hand, she was favored in the understanding of visual elements, and gifted in the completion of puzzles.

She became known for her highly realistic drawings, produced between the ages of 3 and 9, including in books, on the walls of her home, on cereal packets and on any piece of paper. In Nadia's case, a situation of severe disability coexisted with an extraordinary artistic ability.

Specialized school enrollment and media coverage Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's Le Jockey, one of the works memorized and reproduced by Nadia Chomyn, aged 11. When Lorna Selfe left the CDRU, her successors made learning to speak a priority for Nadia. At the age of seven and a half, she was placed at Sutherland House, a specialized school for autistic children, The team at Sutherland House relied for a while on her interest in drawing, devoid of artistic qualities.

In 1977, Lorna Selfe published her book containing Nadia's drawings (Nadia: A Case of Extraordinary Drawing Ability in an Autistic Child). Her schooling was interrupted by a period of intense media attention, during which American journalist Walter Cronkite travelled to Nottingham to make a film about her. She was invited to appear on several TV shows, and Cronkite tried to get her to appear on a set in the United States. initially refused to use the drawing materials he made available to her, and then did not follow his suggestion to draw a horse. She depicted objects from her environment in a simplified way, as well as a self-portrait that was far inferior in quality to her childhood drawings. although she recognized her earlier drawings. Henley noted that Nadia had not made any significant progress in terms of language or autonomy, which made the theory of a loss of her drawing skills alongside the acquisition of other skills hardly credible.

For the rest of her life she was unable to tie her shoes on her own, They usually took between a minute and an hour to complete, interspersed with moments of inspection of her work that could last several minutes, before any corrections were made. It seemed that she drew mainly during her moments of joy, and that this activity brought her intense well-being. She was not encouraged to draw by her family,

The vast majority of her works were copies, with varying degrees of modification and omission, of other illustrations she had seen. In particular, she took inspiration from a collection of farm animal books featuring horses and roosters, drawn in an adult style from photographs. Selfe noted that she sometimes forgot elements of the original that inspired her, but that if she showed her the original, Nadia would complete the drawing with the missing elements. usually without having consulted her source of inspiration for some time. without following the classic known stages. non-realistic representations therefore usually precede the more realistic ones, in three dimensions. without first drawing in two dimensions. They also contradicted the theories of gestalt psychology, according to which mental representation always started from a global perception, before the perception of details. He concluded that she was strictly representing her visual universe, without analyzing it. David Pariser linked this ability to Nadia's refusal or inability to conceptualize what she was drawing. He hypothesized that atypical mental functioning without language may have been a prerequisite for making these kinds of representations. Feliks Topolski, The depth of the gaze of her creations, with eyes that "mirrored the soul", was emphasized, which occurred when she was 8 He drew a parallel between the mutilation of castrati to preserve their vocal talent, and Nadia's attempt at forced "normalization".

Posterity Nadia Chomyn aroused great interest in the field of psychiatry, as one of the few known cases of "autistic savant" from infancy to adulthood. Her achievements have inspired publications aimed at characterizing autistic drawing: C. Park identified as common characteristics an initial lack of interest in color, a preference for stereotyped and derivative subjects, a use of line drawing, an unusual capacity for memory work, and an ability to render what is strictly perceived by sight.

Her drawings are now held at the Bethlem Royal Archives and Museum in Beckenham, and manages their licensing. They are considered outsider art.