Tom Shakespeare challenges stereotypical ideas about creativity and disability, by celebrating a selection of disabled artists, discussing how their impairments fuelled their genius and demonstrating the variety and achievement of disabled lives.
Lucy Jones may well be the best British painter you've never heard of. There is no doubt about her disability, because she was born with cerebral palsy. But she has no intention of identifying as a disabled artist. Cerebral palsy and dyslexia and depression are part of her biography, but they're not on the label for the artwork, any more than being a woman or living in Ludlow should define her or explain what she does. She wants her portraits to offer a universal comment on humanity.