ART: All Rules Terminated
Autism, creativity, and beauty of unfiltered expression
Last week, I witnessed one of the purest forms of art I’ve come to know.
This was an experience that embodied the essence of creativity.
This was the fourth time I’ve facilitated an art experience like this. It’s a simple and powerful model that embodies so much of why I love art, especially abstract art.
Here’s how it goes:
An organization hires/invites me and my friend Grimaldi (also an artist) to come hang out
We bring a big canvas and paints
Each person in the group chooses a color and adds to the canvas
The finished product is a collective piece of art that everyone contributed to
This product is sometimes kept where everyone can enjoy it. Other times it’s sold/auctioned as a fundraiser.
This time we were invited by a local autism organization. The participants were individuals who this organization serves. Small groups rotated through, each person stepping up to a blank canvas with their own color to add.
No instructions beyond that. Just space.
Space for whatever wants to happen to happen.
Some people walked right in and started moving. No hesitation. No second-guessing. Paint hit the canvas in ways I hadn’t seen before. Marks that didn’t try to be anything.
Just expressions. Expressions of personalities and emotions. Expressions of play and curiosity.
You could feel it.
Some embraced the freedom with unfiltered creative gestures.
Others approached more carefully, even timidly.
You could see the hesitation. The conditioning. The habit of needing to ask. The reflex to check if they were doing it right. To ask what was acceptable.
“What should I do?”
“How am I supposed to do this?”
And I told them there was no right or wrong. I told them they could do whatever they want. I told them there were no rules here.
It was open. For some, too open, like being handed freedom without ever having experienced it before.
There was a pause. A kind of internal searching. Then slowly, movement.
And when it came, it wasn’t tentative for long. It opened up into the space. And when it opened, you could feel that too.
Relief. Joy. Expression. Something real coming through.
Something that can’t be taught or performed.
Even the staff joined in. They couldn’t help it. At some point, the line between participant and observer disappeared.
Everyone was in it. Everyone creating. Everyone feeling it.
Abstract art that makes this possible. There are no rules to follow, so there are no rules to break.
Nothing to get wrong. Nothing to get right.
No target to miss. No comparison.
And in that absence of structure, something more honest has room to show up.
And, yes, I believe this applies to the art of living as well.
Grimaldi once told me that art stands for “all rules terminated.”
I’ve always liked that.
But these experiences, especially this last one, have helped me understand it in a deeper way.
I get to live it in the studio. But here I witness it come through others, as I invite them into pure possibility.
What I saw wasn’t just creativity. It was what happens when the pressure to be correct is removed. When expression no longer has to pass through approval. When people stop trying to do it right and start allowing what’s there to move.
And what emerges from that place feels different.
You can truly feel it. Even after the fact.
When I look at my own paintings, I can tell which ones came from that place and which ones didn’t. That’s not because I remember making them. It’s because they carry a different energy.
They’re either alive or they’re managed.
This is why one of my beliefs is that the process matters more than the result, because the result is simply a byproduct of the process.
The result is what’s left behind.
A trace.
A record.
When someone is fully expressed, fully present, fully unconcerned with the outcome, something moves through them that can’t be replicated any other way.
That’s where my favorite work comes from. And I can tell right away.
At a museum, I’ll pass right by the most realistic and masterful painting of an epic historical scene only to stop and stare (sometimes for hours) at a bunch of squiggles on a canvas. Because I can feel the purity of that expression.
To me, it’s the difference between a well-edited academic paper and a raw unfiltered poem written without concern for spelling.
One is from the head. One is from the heart.
At the end of this art experience, everyone signed their names on a separate canvas. One piece, created by many hearts.
It will hang in their community center.
Something they can come back to.
Something they made together.
Every mark is a moment where someone let themselves be as they are.
Unfiltered. Uncorrected. Free.
And that’s what makes it special.
That’s my kind of art.
Oh yeah, here’s the result:
The colours and resulting painting are truly beautiful. It feels free and happy.
This is beautiful.