Story and drawing by Jack Fischer
Art came alive to a dyslexic, low-self esteem boy that needed direction. At an early age, I had a gift for drawing. My eye and hand worked in tandem tracing objects and images in a very short time. On cold, wintery days I would lose myself copying National Geographic pictures. Living in Chicago, my mother and I would visit the Art Institute and enjoy seeing Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Rembrandt’s portraits.
Upon graduating from high school I went on a European trip to see the Masters paintings of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s Sistene chapel ceiling. I was awestruck at the realism of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa capturing her facial expression, skin tones and her eyes. Why it looked like wherever I stood her eyes followed me. “What was she thinking? Was she in love?” To think this painting was over five hundred years old. When I walked into the Sistine Chapel my senses came alive.
Two years after graduating from Indiana State University as an All American gymnast, I was practicing for the AAU Championships and was paralyzed from the neck down doing a double back flip off the parallel bars. I was suicidal without hope until I saw quadriplegic, Joni Eareckson using her mouth to hold a paintbrush. Her talent was still there despite her disability. I said to myself, “if she can draw, so can I.” …
