the PDF of her book - National Aphasia Association

46 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance:
My Parsons flower drawing teacher, after many semesters
with her, is leaving teaching. Like me, she is balancing her life
and work with a disability, multiple sclerosis. She is leaving to
concentrate on her textile design work. When I ask for a reference,
she sends me to her own painting teacher.
Henry Pearson, a well-known painter, neither shows his work or anyone
else’s when he teaches. He quietly persists in our finding our own style. In
the first class he talks practicals about materials, and that’s the end of class
teaching.
Instead he sits down with every one of us individually during the class,
talks about poetry, movies, what I am doing or what I want to do, in my
life or in my painting. If I want him to give me technical instruction, he will
give only what I ask for. He creates an atmosphere of ease and expression,
wandering in personal experiment—seeing in the mind. Some students are
painting in oils and others in watercolor. Some are doing collage, and still
others are sculpting, though the class is titled “Abstract Watercolor.”
I don’t know what I want to do, let alone how to experiment. Most of
the new people drop out by the third week. The rest are old-timers, some of
many years. I stay, not knowing why.
Without class assignments, I bring my vase of flowers. I am comfortable
here, the students companionable. The three women at my table work in
totally different styles, and it’s a lesson just watching how they work. One
is a mathematics teacher and works with webs of grids. Another paints in
geometric spirals on a small canvas, changing the colors in small spaces each
time she goes around. Though I am intimidated, it is the right place to be.
Henry has an ability to see beyond what I am doing. He offers visions
to tweak my imagination. One day in my second year with him, he lends me
a book of Japanese paintings.
“Here, Ruth, look at these. Find the work that is like yours.”
I take the book home, delight in the misty, the spare, the ornate. The