2022

"I literally paint with my head!"

Tom Owens, 67, was born with cerebral palsy and is a resident of Betty's Dream(Rainbow Apartments) in Portsmouth, NH, a facility that enables disabled adults to live independently while receiving care and assistance.

Tom, who uses a wheelchair, has difficulty speaking and has little use of his hands. For most of his life, Owens did not realize he was an artist. In fact, up until January 2008, Owens never had the ability or opportunity to try anything artistic.

Doug Harnden, the maintenance worker at Betty's Dream, had started volunteering to teach residents how to water paint through a class called Rainbow Watercolors. Rainbow Watercolors was in its second year when Doug first talked to Tom about joining the group.  Doug asked Tom what he could do with his hands, which he found to be basically nothing — certainly not hold a paintbrush steady. Harnden asked Tom, "Can you move your head?" And Tom showed he could, so I told him, "We need to stick a brush up your nose!"  "Well, it was said as a joke. Then the next day we got together to try to devise some way to get a brush to stay attached to his head."  What they came up with was a ball cap with an extra-large paper fastener clipped on the bill with a hole drilled in it, which held a paintbrush.

The rest, as they say, is history!