Josh Englehaupt
Joshua Englehaupt was born April 3, 1980. He suffered birth trauma leaving him with a diagnosis of cerebral palsy. Josh attended Easter Seals until the age of seven, at which time testing showed that even though he was non-verbal and unable to walk or feed himself, he was not mentally disabled. As a result of this testing, Josh was able to leave Easter Seals and enter the public school system.

After enduring five years of a 97-mile a day roundtrip commute, his parents made the decision to home school Josh. Carol Englehaupt, Josh's mother, served as his teacher. She modified traditional communication methods and learning applications to produce a custom system to develop the most efficient educational practices for Josh, such as devising an alphabet system that allowed him to accurately choose letters with eye gaze.

Carol herself is an artist and Josh soon indicated his interest in that area. While Carol was taking a watercolor art course, Josh let her know that he wanted to paint, too. Without thinking, she gave him paper and paints and let him finger paint. This method lasted about three pictures. Josh got angry. He kicked his foot and kept looking at the paintbrush in Carol's hand. He wanted to paint with a brush.

Carol did what she always does when Josh wants to do something - she innovatively figured out a way for him to do it. Josh's grip was poor, so Carol had to curl his fingers around the brush so he could hold it. Josh indicated he wanted more independence. Carol wishfully mentioned to her husband that the ideal paintbrush for Josh would be one with a handle like a screwdriver. Josh's father immediately got up from his chair and disappeared into the garage, returning shortly with a couple of paintbrushes he had modified with screwdriver handles.

These were the first brushes that Josh used. The handles were big enough that he could get a grip on them. His first paintings were rough. He chose flowers to work on because flowers can be painted in a loose style and still look like a flower.

Slowly, Josh's grip strengthened and he started to understand painting techniques. He has acquired a nice library of how-to books and videotapes that he watches over and over. As he gained more control, he was able to stop using the brushes with screwdriver handles and transition to big brushes with thick handles.

Watercolors work well for Josh because he can use a lot of water to wet the paper and then drop color in and the water carries the paint for him. His brush strokes are rough, so having the water carry the paint helps.

Josh isn't an independent painter. Carol has to mix his colors and clean and load his brush, and support his arm so he doesn't smear the paint. They continue to work towards more independence - Carol is in the concept stage of designing a table for him that would put the paint and water at an equal distance away from him. Currently, if he can reach the paint, he can't reach the water. If both were at an equal distance, Josh would be able to start cleaning and loading the brush himself.

Because he's non-verbal, Carol had to develop a method for Josh to choose the subject of his works. Carol and Josh go through pictures from seed catalogs, books, or other resources one by one and Josh shakes his head for 'no' and looks upwards with his eyes for 'yes'. Carol compares this method to the game 20 questions. Sometimes she pull a section out of the pages, other times she pull individual flowers out and move them around on the paper, until Josh is satisfied that is what he wants to paint. Then Carol creates a simple line drawing for postition, and Josh begins putting paint on layer by layer. Josh works on as many as five pictures at a time, which line the wall where he can look at them and decide what colors he wants to use and where the color goes. It is a slow, tedious process but working slowly way allows him to build the pictures step by step. Carol says when Josh has four or five projects going at once, it is like living in a colorful flower garden.

Josh would like to branch out into other subect matter and continues to develop his knowledge and technique.

Our Home Studio is the online home for Josh Englehaupt's artwork. The site features his prints that are for sale as art prints and note cards, and contact information.