Yvonne’s portraits are ray of sunshine
Today those charged with the well being of people living with serious difficulties now focus on empowerment rather than simple maintenance.
Over the last few weeks the work of Yvonne Condon, a lively and talented artist who attends the Cope Centre in Glasheen, Cork, has been seen in this newspaper and in an exhibition currently running at the People’s Museum, Fitzgerald Park.
It includes samples of 17 talented artists who benefit from the facilities Cope provides. It is impossible to overestimate the importance and significance that creative expression plays in the lives of those who are often struggling against the odds.
All humans have a need to communicate. Yet, it takes time, patience and resources to explore individual — and often unique — abilities.
For some, this might best be expressed through art, or gardening, playing a sport, set-dancing or creative writing, anything, in fact that might give a person the opportunity to say “This is me!”.
Without these chances, the quality of life is inevitably impaired and unique talents will lay unseen. Yvonne Condon’s joyous, mischievous and life-enhancing paintings are a perfect example of what could have been lost.
Without them, we would have missed her work — and that of the 17 other talented Cope artists currently being exhibited at The Public Museum, Fitzgerald Park, Cork city, Oct 16 to Jan 31.
Herman Marbe facilitates the art classes at Glasheen and has worked with Yvonne for a year. He professes himself to be constantly amazed by her burgeoning abilities.
“Her work is amazing. She’s fast and she doesn’t think for too long about what she’s painting. Once she did 20 paintings in three hours.
“You simply can’t measure the changes it can make in people, the increase in self-esteem and confidence.”
Yvonne has Fraser’s Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that can cause intellectual impairment and other problems. She communicates through sign language, and, of course, through her vibrant paintings. I wanted to find out more about the talented young woman with the flying paintbrush, so I spoke to her mother Margaret about life with Yvonne.
>>“It’s incredible. People recognise her on the street now. They say: ‘Oh, you’re the artist aren’t you?’ She loves that. And she loves seeing her picture in the paper.”
>>“It was very hard at first. I was told she’d never speak or walk, that she’d be a cabbage, that she’d never be right. But we took her home. We had to feed her with a syringe, but soon she was crawling and walking. Because Yvonne looked different, people would stare sometimes or say hurtful things. Now they want to shake her hand. But we never hid her away and we lived as normal a family life as possible.”
>>“And that’s just how Yvonne lives her life — at top speed. She always wants to be up and doing something. She likes to watch television in the front room on her own, so she can flick through the channels without everyone yelling at her. Every night when I get home from work, we have to go for a walk together, even though she’s been busy all day. Yvonne has a great appetite for life.”
>>“It was her art teacher, Herman, at the Glasheen Centre who has really inspired her. He has a way of bringing out the best in people. I can’t speak highly enough of him. Yvonne loves him. She’s been working with him for over a year and she looks forward to that day all week. Herman says she paints so fast because she doesn’t want the session to end.”
>>“The first time we visited I knew that this was the place I wanted Yvonne to be, where she would be happy, fulfilled. They had everything — arts sports, crafts. I couldn’t say enough about them. Yvonne’s tried it all. She loves animals; for a while all she painted was meerkats. Then it was the portraits as she began to develop her own style. She’s a mystery to me sometimes.
>>“She does. It’s quite unusual for someone with her condition, but she’ll write all day sometimes. Yvonne is very intelligent in many ways and fussy about her hair, her food, her shoelaces. But she’s not streetwise, so we do have to watch her because she never sees any bad in people.”
>>“Yvonne is so happy with what she’s doing at the moment and that’s wonderful for my husband Jimmy and her sister Kiara, for all of us. I can see a different kind of brightness about Yvonne — and her paintings — these days. There have been times when we have felt lonely, isolated. But when I saw her picture and her paintings in the paper, my heart rose. I’ve never know her happier.”
