Images of the epileptic fit (II)

The expressiveness of a work of art in no way has to depend always on many years of experience, on the ability to penetrate mentally to the heart of the matter, or on the craftsmanship of the artist.

Even the work of a child can have great depth of content, as, for example, in the picture produced in 1970 by the then six-year-old Thomas, who himself suffered from epilepsy. He, together with his equally epileptic classmates, had been asked by the teacher to paint a seizure that they had witnessed in a school pupil.

Thomas painted a girl, who has fallen to the floor in an epileptic fit; the drama of the fall is emphasized by the overturned stool in the right foreground of the picture. The arms and legs of the fallen child are slight bent into an unnatural position and held out stiffly. (Even the two plaits of the girl show an extremely stretched ["tonic"] position!) Blood streams from the mouth of the seizure patient and gathers into a pool to the right of the girl’s head. The size of the pool, which is exaggerated and clearly bears no relation to the reality of bleeding caused by the tongue being bitten, can be taken as an indication of the frightening impression that this bleeding made on the small painter. The upper right quadrant of the picture is taken up by a yellow painted sun, the symbol of light, life and joy. But: The lower part of the sun is covered by a black cloud painted with heavy lines, as if Thomas wishes to say that this fit and this illness darken the life of the girl thus afflicted, decrease her quality of life and overshadow her daily life. Nevertheless, as perhaps an observer with a very positive attitude will note, the sun has not been completely covered; half of it is still recognisable as a shining disk, as if some hopeful aspects will still enter into the life of this afflicted girl.

Thomas, the little artist, might not have portrayed these details in the picture with conscious deliberation or with intentional allusion, but the spontaneous force of expression of this picture by the child artist stands only a little way behind that of professional creative artists who deal with the topic of epilepsy and its effects.