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Autistic 5-yr Old Sells Art Work, Funds Therapy

October 10, 2014 by Marion Maneker

Iris Halmshaw

Iris Halmshaw is a British girl who is autistic. She’s also an accomplished painter who is funding her therapy through her parents sales of her artwork:

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

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. “All profits from the originals go into Iris’s savings account,” says Carter-Johnson. “We also sell cards and prints, and the profits from those go towards her speech therapy, occupational therapy, music and yoga.” The money generated from sales of the prints has had profoundly beneficial effects on Iris’ day-to-day life. According to Carter-Johnson, systems like Gemiini speech therapy, for instance, have made an immeasurable difference to her ability to communicate.

The extraordinary art of autistic ‘5-year-old Monet’  (KSL.com)

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