Strokes of a gifted child

Reese has been described as an art prodigy by a US-based professor of psychology who deals with cognition in the arts in typical and gifted children.

Reese Matthew Kam’s mother has always believed her six-year-old son is a gifted child. He could recite the alphabet at 18 months old, and a year later he was reading on his own.

But the last thing Florence Wong, expected was that he’d turn out to be gifted in art.

“When I first had Reese, I was reading a lot of parenting tips that encouraged children to express themselves through drawing. So art was just one of the activities that I wanted him to work on,” says the 36-year-old English tutor. To her disappointment then, Reese’s initial response to art was mere indifference.

“Most children would start scribbling or colouring by the age of two but Reese seemed to have no interest whatsoever in art. One day, to encourage him to pick up a pencil or crayon, I drew a scene from the Pixar animation, Up, which he really loved. He started asking me to draw the same picture repeatedly – he would quietly watch me at work, but would never offer to help.”

So it came as a surprise when Reese, out of the blue, waltzed up to his mother and showed her his abstract rendition of a scene from the cartoon, depicting a house afloat in a sea of balloons.

“It looked a little like something drawn by Picasso – it didn’t look like a house; just a clearing surrounded by strings, which he said were balloons.

“I was just really happy with the effort. I started giving him more paper and coloured pens to experiment with. After a week or so, he drew the same scene on a white board but this time, it was more realistic. From then on, he just started drawing things from memory – buildings he’d seen upclose, or the ones on Google or YouTube,” Wong recalls.

At three-and-a-half years old, Reese began churning out drawings – in one day he could fill up to 10 sheets of A3 paper with landscape imageries, based on real life images as well as fantasy.

Plastered on his playroom is a collection of his hand-drawn images – startling global architectural structures tinged with realism, from a vivid New Year’s Eve skyline in Paris, to an elaborate Gongmen City in China, to the colourful Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, Russia.

At one point, his sketches involved spectres of natural disasters, such as tsunami, tornadoes and meteor showers unleashing their might on celebrated skyscrapers. It was only after comparing Reese’s work to that of his peers that Wong and her husband realised that their son is talented in art.

A mind of his own

While they were delighted with Reese’s artistic development, his parents was worried about his socialising skills. They could see he was thriving and learning faster than other children, but they were concerned because Reese had problems interacting with his peers during playtime.

“He didn’t seem to socialise well with his peers. That’s the first thing that got us worried,” Wong says. As it were, Reese had a hard time fitting in at preschool.

“He was hyperactive to the point that the teachers thought he had ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). He didn’t enjoy sitting down with the other kids during circle time. They had to give him books just to keep him quiet. He didn’t like to be told what to do; he just wouldn’t conform.

“We tried enrolling him in a speech and drama class but after the first lesson, the teacher told us that they could not accommodate his ways. He just wasn’t listening to instructions.

“There were nine other kids in the class so it was only fair that Reese dropped out. It was really quite depressing to have had to hear that,” Wong recalls.

Wong and her husband consulted a developmental pediatrician, who assured them that Reese didn’t have ADHD.

“The doctor’s diagnosis was that Reese was just immature in terms of his social-emotional levels. She called him a gifted child but suggested that he may have Asperger’s Syndrome, which involves a lack of empathy and an inability to read social cues. In the end, she couldn’t give us an exact diagnosis because Reese also had characteristics that contradicted the syndrome,” Wong revealed.

For one, Reese had an excellent command of language and a huge vocabulary. Those with Asperger’s, on the other hand, are often unable to use language appropriately in a social context.

“We decided to give the labelling a rest. Six months ago when we went for a followup with the doctor, Reese actually showed signs of improvement, though he was still not really engaging in the right way. He seemed to be going through asynchronous (uneven intellectual, physical, and emotional) development, which is typical of gifted children.”

Wong has since decided that homeschooling is best for Reese.

“Things got better when we pulled him out from the nursery. I’ve learned a lot from other homeschooling mothers, who just let their children be, as long as they don’t go overboard. We are still worried but we are also banking on time, in hopes that his condition may improve as he grows.

“At the rate he’s going, he can easily do his O-levels when he’s 12. But we are not going to do that. We are not going to rush. We’ve heard a lot about gifted children developing social-emotional problems because they are put together with classmates who are eight years older and they have to struggle to fit in. Even if Reese completes his degree at 15, who’s going to want to hire him for a proper job? We’ve decided that we’ll just go at it at his own pace. If he wants to go faster, we’ll go faster. Otherwise, we’ll just let him have fun.”

Stocking up for the future

When Star2 visited the family’ s home in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Reese would be lying flat on the sofa one moment, and dashing in and out of rooms in the next.

“When there are other people around, he tends to get a bit excited. But just give him a pen and paper, and he’ll sit still for 20 minutes to an hour,” Wong explains. The one thing that has stayed consistent is that Reese’s drawings are always spontaneous. “He never plans his drawings, but there’s always a story behind each one. Drawing is a form of communication for him,” Wong observes.

Reese’s parents have also sought expert help to verify their son’s artistic abilities. They recently contacted US-based Dr Ellen Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College who directs the Arts and Mind Lab which focuses on cognition in the arts in typical and gifted children.

When contacted by Star2 , Winner, 65, confirmed these observations, which she had shared with the Wongs: “I have glanced through Reese’s work. It is stunning. I’d call him an art prodigy. Instead of insisting on optimal realism, his drawings are fluid and playful and filled with movement.”

What’s more, Reese’s work also reminded Winner of the childhood drawings of Paul Klee, the late German-Swiss painter. Klee is known for his simple stick figures, suspended fish, moon faces, eyes, arrows, and quilts of colour, which he orchestrated into fantastic and childlike yet deeply meditative works.

In her “Predicting Artistic Brilliance” article co-written with Jennifer E. Drake for Scientific American Mind magazine, Winner suggested that parents played an important role in nurturing the talent of precocious artists. Some ways in which they could help is by encouraging art-making behaviour in the early years, providing high-quality art supplies, and taking the child to museums to expose him to a range of styles in which artists have worked on.

“Given the lack of attention and time devoted to art education in most schools, the opportunity to study art formally outside of school very likely is critical if the child is to go on to become an artist,” she wrote.

Reese’s parents have nurtured his artistic talent by enrolling him in art classes but he didn’t respond well in that environment. They have also taken him to visit art museums in Florence, Italy, but Reese was not all that interested in the masterpieces.

“He was more excited when we went sightseeing, and he saw the many different buildings around him. I believe that his style in art is more about drawing inspiration from his personal observations,” Wong said.

Apart from showcasing her son’s work on a Facebook page entitled Reese’s Secret Gallery and a parenting blog at Reesematthewkam.blogspot.com, Wong hopes to garner enough support to one day share Reese’s work via a solo exhibition in an art gallery.

“Just in case Reese cannot fit in well to the society, he has this path, this artistic talent to fall back on. That’s one of the main reasons why we want to help him organise an exhibition. Even if it doesn’t work out, at least we know we’ve tried to help him start something.”