Our Story

{this blog is written by G’s mom}

I have always loved art. Many of my electives in high school and college were art related. I almost minored in it (one studio class short). Before G was born, I pinned baby and toddler art crafts to my Pinterest board. I knew I wanted to do fun, creative things when I had children.

My son, G, was born with Cdkl5 Deficiency Disorder. He is multiply disabled. But he is an artist. What I’ve learned to do since having G is to improvise. To modify and adapt what I’d like to do with what we are able to do.

When I started making paintings with G, they were gifts for family and special projects like for his birthday. I thought they looked good! About the same time I started noticing that real artists were sharing their work with others through social media like on Instagram and Facebook. I wondered if we could do that too. I thought about it for awhile. I thought maybe we could call it Art for Hope/Love/Cure. (“Hope, Love, Cure” is a slogan adopted by the Cdkl5 Deficiency Disorder community.) So, I started an Instagram page. I shared pictures of paintings we had done and attached hashtags like #specialneedsart and #curecdkl5. Soon we had followers! And they weren’t all people I knew in real life! Other people. Artists. They followed us! I started a Facebook page. My friends, my parent’s friends, and Cdkl5 friends liked our page. And we sold art!

The International Foundation for Cdkl5 Research has helped me to set up a situation where we can sell our art to directly benefit Cdkl5 research. #allmoneytoresearch is our new slogan.

Working on Art for Hope/Love/Cure with G has been exciting, fun, and very rewarding. I have big plans for us going forward. New ideas for projects and (hopefully) actual exhibitions of our work! Stay tuned and thanks for checking out our blog!