Once Were Warriors by Donna Williams[/caption] Once Were Warriors by Donna Williams. In dedication to the heroic hostages of the Sydney Siege which ended 2am this morning. Painted today, 16/12/14. (sorry its blurred, better pic tomorrow in daylight). In the painting I see the chaos of the night…their lives in the control of a madman, the sights, smells, words, the warrior within waiting to conquer the madness of that night, the sleep those people didn’t get, the surrealism, the nightmare all but two were rescued from. This is my artists prayer for the survivors and my tribute to those who lost their lives that night saving others.

This month’s artworks are a series: Peace, Intimacy, Letting Go Read the rest of this entry »

Death and After Life by Donna Williams Read the rest of this entry »

This month’s artwork is titled ‘Release’. Read the rest of this entry »

We all get earworms. I do too. But this is rather different to having the equivalent of a radio program in your head. I feel I’ve had my own invisible iPod all my life because I have always had music starting up in my head, including to the degree it got in the way of learning or processing external sounds… or perhaps it filled that gap because I couldn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

This month’s artwork is titled ‘Heritage’. Read the rest of this entry »

I presently have around 11,000 people a month visit my blog and website, another 5000 on my FB page, then there’s Twitter and You Tube. I have 10 published books, videos and artworks all around the world. Yet in 1991 when my first book, Nobody Nowhere, became the first international bestseller by any person diagnosed with autism, I rejected the TV appearances and the offer to be followed for a week by a photographer from Time Magazine. I soon also rejected the ‘autism circus’ atmosphere of ‘Meet The Speaker‘ sessions at major autism conferences and failed to embrace the ‘it girl’ thing.

The result was Read the rest of this entry »

So far we have been through the Medical Model of disability, then moved to the Social Model of disability and more recently the ‘pride movement’ moved on from the social model of disability to an Affirmation Model of disability. But in addition to the medical, social and affirmation models of disability, from this day forth I’d like to propose a new model… THE EMPOWERMENT MODEL Read the rest of this entry »

How do we each perceive our own disability/ies? How do our communities perceive them? Our families? Our society? Our support workers, therapists, doctors? There are a variety of models of disability and each has levels of validity and equally associated pitfalls in over application. What is a model of disability? Read the rest of this entry »

He wrote the introduction to the diaries of Donald Friend, diaries detailing 10 years of Donald Friend’s sex with Balinese boys as young as 9 years old. In the introduction Barry Humphries referred to his friend as a “Benevolent Pedophile”, suggesting that as his friend had up to 20 of these ‘houseboys’ and gave accommodation and schooling in exchange for sex, that this was somehow benevolent, and Humphries certainly visited and stayed with Donald Friend during the 10 years, enjoying his ‘hospitality’. Read the rest of this entry »