holy granola. i'd buy that! this child is amazing. such talent. imagine where she'll be in a few years. or even months. this is likely quite ignorant of me, but i sometimes wonder whether autism represents a kind of evolution.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/09/world/the-extraordinary-art-of-autistic-five-year-old-monet/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2

(CNN) -- At first glance, they could almost pass for masterpieces by Monet or Renoir.

But these impressionist-style paintings -- which are changing hands for thousands of dollars -- were painted by a five-year-old girl who is unable to speak.

Meet Iris Halmshaw, an autistic child from Leicestershire, UK, who has been producing these striking artworks since she was three.

She has autism, a condition that has made her unable to communicate except through the medium of art.

"From the first painting, she filled the paper with color and it wasn't random -- it was considered and thought out," says her mother, Arabella Carter-Johnson.

Five-year-old painter Iris Grace Halmshaw

"She was so excited and happy I knew that we had found a key into her world and a way of interacting with her."

READ: Autism affects one in 68 children

Autism changed everything

The journey started when Iris was two. Carter-Johnson and her husband, Peter-Jon Halmshaw, realized that something was wrong: she had not picked up any words, and rarely made eye contact.

"We researched it ourselves," her mother recalls, "but as parents, you are always hoping that there was some other explanation."

Iris was officially diagnosed as a child with autism. According to Carter-Johnson, the doctor was "depressing" because he told them that very few therapies worked.

Not to be deterred, the couple embarked on "long nights of research", which led them to the idea of art therapy.

The little girl picked up painting techniques astonishingly quickly, and before long was spending much time at work on her canvases.

Remarkably for a child of her age, her sessions involved about two hours of consistent concentration.

How one girl's talent captured the world

To begin with, Carter-Johnson, who is a photographer herself, started sharing her daughter's paintings onFacebook.

The overwhelming response from her friends convinced her that she hadn't been blinded by mother's pride. Iris was special.

Fast forward two years, and Iris' paintings are in high demand, and are starting to be worth a lot of money.

Due to the high level of demand for Iris' art, her mother has set up a website to sell both originals and prints.

It was a runaway success, quickly attracting over a million pageviews from more than 200 countries.

Amazing!

it really is, innit? look at her go! i think i'll check out her website.

wonderful stuff

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn...

you can't beat that

she really has a major talent, i hope her success brings light to her life

Beautiful!

morningsong said:

Sometimes I don't get "unique" art, but I find these too be wonderful. Awesome

i feel the same way

A lot of it reminds me of a rainstorm.

^ her art makes me wonder how she sees/perceives the world around her. is that what it looks like to her?

XxAxX said:

^ her art makes me wonder how she sees/perceives the world around her. is that what it looks like to her?

Thats what I thought too, since she's so young and this is clearly not how we see the world with our physical eyes. But I wondered what she saw that made her want to paint her pictures.

y'all are cray cray .. obviously the cat painted those! just look at the cat claw scratches

I don't see Monet, maybe Jackson Pollock?

wildgoldenhoney said:

XxAxX said:

^ her art makes me wonder how she sees/perceives the world around her. is that what it looks like to her?

Thats what I thought too, since she's so young and this is clearly not how we see the world with our physical eyes. But I wondered what she saw that made her want to paint her pictures.

mm hmm. she doesn't speak. or interact with people, but she connects with the cat, which is a 'therapy cat' and helps her work. i wonder how autism affects perception; is it like the opposite of color blindness? is she hyper-sensitive? i don't mean to be offensive by my curiosity. it's just, she obviously perceives color differently, so what else does she 'see' that we do not?