ALL ABOUT
THE SONSHINE ARTISTS

Max was born in 2008 and is now 16 years old.

He was diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder and severe Learning Disability at just 2.5 years old.

In early 2024 Max was diagnosed with Tourettes Syndrome and this impacted his life massively.

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As a baby and toddler he hit his milestones including some speech then at about 18 months old he started to play more rigid and repetitively, didn't make much eye contact, his sounds started to get more extraordinary and he lost almost all his speech.

Since he was a baby, I gave Max daily opportunities to be creative as that's how I function as a creative person. Like most parents I started by introducing him to art through crayons and Playdough. He loved the feel of it between his fingers, mixing colours, rolling it into sausages and balls, pulling arms and legs from lumps of dough and adding googly eyes. (We still play like this with little brother for hours!) 

As he grew older I introduced other art mediums like paint, glitter and glue and it was clear he did not like these things on his skin! "Off Mumum!" From about 6 years old he was less sensory-averse and enjoyed exploring paint more. His favourite colours have always been red and green and he usually started with one of these (still does actually). Often he only wanted 1 or 2 colours on the page. Reflective of his time playing with crayons, he started many paintings with swirls and circles and he still paints and draws a lot with these shapes. 

A couple of years later he expanded more into representative art. When he was young he often wanted me to hold his wrist or the top of his hand and fingers in order to support his grip and give him confidence. Whenever I did this I didn't have any input to the marks; he chooses the direction and pressure of the pen/pencil/brush so the art is always completely his. 

In 2020 Max started to take great joy in Impasto - thick paint - and often chooses a roller and palette knife to paint with. During 2020 and 2021 Max entered into the realm of hormonal changes and growing pains. Art has been a hugely important part of his emotional regulation. It has helped him manage pain, stress, frustration and restlessness. He's expressed so much in his paintings and it has often moved me to tears.

Max's challenges we now know were caused by his Tourettes and we've spent a huge amount of time this year in conversation with his Dr at CAMHS to try to get the right balance of medication for him to manage the tics, which were complex, painful and exhausting. As of this Autumn 2024, we seem finally to have cracked it with the medication and I am so happy to say that our son has been comfortable now with greatly reduced tics for the last few weeks. I really cannot describe the relief for his Dad and me!

As well as painting, our Max loves walks, cooking, video games and movies (especially Harry Potter and The Lord Of The Rings) and has taken on another hobby to help support his health and regulation; strength training! He absolutely loves it!

He has continued thrive on his creative journey; really finding his artistic voice and taking great joy in expressing himself through his art.

It truly is such a window into his soul and it's such a pleasure to be able to share that with so many people around the world.

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TRISTAN - Youngest Sonshine

Tristan was born in 2014 and is now 10 years old. He was diagnosed as Autistic with a mild learning disability when he was 4 and was non-verbal till he was 3. He is now a real chatterbox, just like his Mama! 

Just like his big brother, he has been given opportunities to be creative all his life and has always enjoyed it. As a little one he loved painting right away after watching his brother and me having a go and immediately took to painting with his hands, feet and sometimes his whole body! 

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As a sensory seeker, Tristan has been eager to try all the different kinds of art mediums offered him and enjoys pens, pencils, chalks, crayons, paint sticks, paint, glitter, shaving foam, you name it!

Tristan has also always loved creating with Playdough and we've had some wonderful, creative, sensory, story-driven, imaginative play times using various tools and branded toys as well as kitchen bowls and cutlery and of course many googly eyes! He LOVES googly eyes! 

The painting that started our business was actually one we call 'The Favourite' which was painted by Tristan's hands when he was just 3 years old. When I shared a photo of that painting to my Facebook page my family and friends were blown away by it - my brother even wrote a beautiful poem inspired by it (which will be featuring in our upcoming book) - and a few said they'd like to have it hung on their wall. So I got a few canvases printed of it and that, So Sonshine Art was born!

The last couple of years Tristan has become a true storyteller; creating characters - both drawn and painted - and writing short stories to go with them. They've been such a glorious window into the heart and soul of our Youngest love. I've been thrilled with how popular his marvellous Story Mugs have been and I can't wait to share more of the designs with you.

The future vision for Tristan's creative journey is to get his collection of short stories and characters published into a book. It's a completely foreign process to me and I'm still doing a lot of research into it all but please do sign up for emails if you haven't already to be first to know when it's ready!

Amy - Sonshine Art Mama

I'm 41. Youngest of 5 children; 3 brilliant brothers and one wonderful sister. My childhood was bliss. I'm not an artist drawn to create to process trauma or demons from my past. My past formed me to become a confident, generous, proactive, sociable woman; seeking fun, peace, beauty and contentment for myself, my family and all my loved ones. 

I've always loved creativity in various forms. As a tiny one I remember drawing in the mud with sticks, tracing the shimmery trails of snails and slugs with a finger. I loved watching light twinkle on puddles and frosty leaves and petals. I've always loved colourful skies, particularly sunsets and finding shapes in clouds. In many ways I'm still that little girl. I marvel at nature in the same way; you'll see from my gallery.

At school I continued to love art and it was my favourite lesson throughout school along with English (I love stories and poetry too). I went to art college in Reading, Berkshire for a year to complete an Art Foundation course ahead of choosing my degree. I chose my degree mostly because of my love for film and in particular for The Lord Of The Rings series. I had many making-of books bought for me over those years when the films were released and marvelled at the layers of details and multitude of skills required to bring that vision together and decided I wanted to try that for myself! 

So the degree I chose was Animation. It was a fascinating time for me. I learned how to animate but I wasn't the best at it. I learned a bit about how to write and tell stories which I loved but it didn't scream at me that that was what I wanted to do either. I didn't love editing. I didn't love the techy bits. I didn't love the hours and hours of in-betweening (look it up!). I loved drawing and photography; that's what I got excited about. And in my 2nd year I put myself forward to be the student rep and kept that role for the 2 remaining years of my course. It involved being a point of contact for my fellow students to help with various issues and I was in charge of setting up a team to help me organise the graduation show which we held in London. 

Another important thing happened during my university course... I met my future husband. We were engaged in our 2nd year of dating and we got married the Autumn after my Summer graduation. After graduating I looked for jobs in the film and TV industry but unless I was willing to take a low/no pay job there were no jobs for me. It was the same situation for the majority of my fellow graduates that year unfortunately. Too many graduates, not enough jobs. So I worked a couple of bar and waitressing jobs and got a salary job in a financial services company doing a job I hated for a couple of years until - blessedly - I became pregnant with our first son. I welcomed maternity leave with open arms and decided not to go back to an office ever again. 

My beautiful little boy, my Maximus, was the most dreamy baby. He was so good. He ate and slept incredibly well. He was gentle and content and so easy to raise. Then around 18 months old we started to notice changes in him - as per his 'About Me' section above - and my parenting techniques had to evolve and my plans to maybe get a job in film or TV slowly ebbed away. I wasn't resentful at all; it was absolutely our choice that I would be a stay at home Mama to both our sons. For many years it gave me great joy and I wished for nothing more.

Then as the boys grew up I discovered something was missing from my heart and life.

The time had come for me to step back to my creativity and bring my family with me.

Back to art. Back to taking ownership of my own joy. 

As you'll see from my gallery my art is almost exclusively inspired by nature. I've been painting more the last year or two and I'm really doing a lot of drawing. Botanical art and animals. My continuous line drawings are what soothe me the most. There's something so gentle and organic about following a shape and taking a line for a walk around a page. I just love it. Many of those drawings are now in my colouring books and create the designs for my montage artworks that feature on our cushions and prints.

I'm thrilled to bits you're here. Thanks so much for caring enough to read about us.