Silent World

Speech by Kevin Whelan, on the opening of an Exhibition of New Paintings by Adrian Tarpey, The Kenny Gallery, 6th April 2001

I have known Adrian for four years now. (I am employed on a part-time basis as his carer). To write that anyone can really "know" someone with autism might be called a contradiction in terms, especially since Adrian also happens to be deaf. And, of course, he is an artist. Being autistic, even with the power of hearing and speech, it is unlikely that Adrian would feel much inclined towards "explaining" himself. He is a genuine autistic savant. That word savant is interesting. It is from the French and it means "to know". But we cannot know with Adrian.

Autists generally are not "big" on talk or chat, regardless of whether they are deaf or not, it isn't their style. This is a nice antidote to the contemporary trends of our culture which almost demands that all of us speed dial one another or tap away on computer keyboards in a frenetic rush to say more and do more and be more. Exactly how much genuine communication is going on is anyone's guess.

Significantly, though, Adrian is an artist. How did this come about? What stirred within him that compelled him to want to create? Apart from early clues provided by his parents, Vincent and Brid, we don't know. And the man himself isn't in a position to tell us. This might be just as well.

The singularly mysterious thing about what is commonly called "the creative process" is how, well, mysterious it is, in terms of motivation, ideas, themes. Where do these obscure impulses come from, where do they really come from? This is a genuine mystery, and has been since ancient man first scrawled his crude yet beautiful scenes on cave walls thirty millennia ago.

Unfortunately people who aren't creative want to know why paintings or sculpture or novels or poems are created as much as how they are.

Art and the motivations of the artist, that's a tricky one. As a writer myself, the only honest answer I can give is I don't know. And even if I did have the insight somehow to know, I'm not sure that I would want to. I cannot explain it, I have no grand theories about it. I am just grateful that I have been blessed so far with the time and the grace to be able to write. I ask for no more than that.

A lot of out-and-out rubbish is written about Art. It is difficult to write about it without sounding pretentious or pompous, and it is even more difficult to write about an artist one knows personally, whose work one admires. Kenneth Clark at the beginning of his great work "Civilisation" said that he could not define civilisation/art in abstract terms, but that he could recognise it when he saw it. Looking at Adrian's paintings, I know that what I see is art, and art created with skill and grace, from out of a sense of mute wonder and, yes, mystery.