Colin Hanssen, a 31-year-old Western Australian artist who lives with cerebral palsy, is preparing abstract paintings for possible exhibition in Perth galleries. A neurosurgeon once told his family he wasn't expected to reach his first birthday. Hanssen paints from his wheelchair, using his right hand. His paintings, and the path that brought them before the public, put his lived experience ahead of other people’s predictions about what he could do.
An outlet, and a voice
Hanssen is largely non-verbal. He combines painting with performance, using colourful and earthy tones to express his experience. His mother, Wendy Hanssen, said his artistic skill emerged in an art therapy class six months ago. “That was when it was brought home that actually this could be an outlet for Colin,” she said. “This could potentially be his voice.”
The work began in a therapy class, but people don't describe it as only a clinical exercise. Art therapist Serena McLaughlan has worked with Hanssen since he began painting and helped curate the exhibition collection. She said visitors were drawn to the work and interested in its story and process. The paintings let people engage with Hanssen’s experience without treating spoken words as the measure of what he can communicate.
McLaughlan said much of Hanssen’s art draws on his time living in Africa. “Engaging with vast expanses of landscape is a lived experience that comes through in the painting,” she said. “It's the power of art to talk of his lived experience and his stories over words.” She described art as “pre-verbal,” adding that drawing, music and dance all come before words.
The prediction and the work
Wendy Hanssen said a neurosurgeon told the family to love Colin while they had him because he wasn't expected to reach his first birthday. His mother recalled that his first birthday came and went, and said the family knew they were “clearly on the right track.” She said he was “beating the odds left, right and centre.”
That medical prediction now sits beside the work Hanssen makes: abstract paintings created with his right hand from his wheelchair, a collection in preparation, and performance alongside painting. The report doesn't present his work as overcoming a medical condition; it describes a particular artist developing a practice and finding an outlet for expression. That distinction matters when somebody else has framed a person's future through their own expectations.
Hanssen completed his first exhibition at his rural studio in Redmond, on the outskirts of Albany, and earned selection for this year's Southern Art and Craft Trail. Now he is preparing a collection for possible exhibition in Perth galleries. Wendy Hanssen said two artists from different Perth galleries had asked whether Colin would exhibit with them. “We're going to look at getting a series done,” she said.
Those invitations offer a path to wider exhibition, though the next step remains conditional: the family is considering a series, and a Perth exhibition is possible. For now, the record is his studio exhibition, selection for the trail, and paintings built from his own experience. His mother’s account began with a stark prediction from a medical authority. The work gives that story another voice.