From the age of one, Rebekah traced pictures in the air with her index finger. Drawing quickly became her language.
Almost overnight she learned to hold a pencil, gripping it with effortless control, leaning over the page in total absorption. Her early drawings arrived fully formed and confident. Colour followed just as naturally, one ordinary afternoon was all it took. She would lean joyfully out of her buggy, pointing and shouting, “Yellow! Red! Green!”
Autism, Drawing and ‘Behind the Ear‘
Her early work was filled with circles and faces, some smiling, some solemn. I asked who they were.
“Your friends,” she said. She always called herself “you,” never “I.”
“Where do your friends live?” I asked.
She pointed over her shoulder and exclaimed, “Behind the ear!”
It felt strangely poetic, an early glimpse into her inner world, translated onto paper before she had the words for it.
As the years passed, her drawings grew richer in colour and confidence, alive with emotion and intuition.
Art Brut Origins and Autism Link
The term Art Brut was coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe raw, instinctive work made outside academic art traditions. It later became known in English as Outsider Art. The definition is supposed to celebrate art made without concern for markets, audiences, or rules, honest, unfiltered, unpretentious.
Yet the label has always troubled me.
Why Outsider Art Labels Fail Autism
When I began sharing Rebekah’s work, the first question I was repeatedly asked was whether she had formal art training. Beneath that question sat an unspoken hierarchy, a sense that self-taught work belonged to an “other” category, separate from the so-called legitimate contemporary art world.
If there is Outsider Art, then there must be Insider Art. And that divide feels less like clarity and more like exclusion. It quietly reinforces ideas about who belongs and who does not, compounding ableism and cultural snobbery under the guise of classification.
Pure Autism-Driven Outsider Creativity
Rebekah’s work isn’t made for anyone. It isn’t shaped by audience, market, or intention to belong. That is precisely what makes it pure, raw, and honest. The paradox is that this is exactly what Outsider Art claims to describe — yet the label itself creates distance, not understanding.
Her art exists because she needs to make it. And that, to me, is enough.
Ruth (Rebekah’s mum)
