Tomasz Sitkowski was born in 1949 with Down's Syndrome. He was not expected to survive his early years. However, after overcoming many hardships, his parents recognized the remarkable calming and beneficial effects of music on the young child, and began to take him to concerts. At the age of fourteen he began to draw. His theme, to be repeated obsessively over subsequent years, was the concert hall and its music, expressed through a dynamic use of colour. The architectural interiors pulsate and are alive with sound, which Tomasz actually experienced as colour (synaesthesia). He can only create his art whilst listening to his tape player. His love of music, thus reified, has become his main form of expression and communication with the outside world. In 1985 Tomasz Sitkowski's case history and art were discussed at an international conference on mental disablement in New York. His drawings are in the Ethnographic Museums of Radom and Wrocław and have been in over sixty exhibitions between 1968 and 2001. He is also included in Aleksander Jackowski's definitive book on Polish naive art. (Information from Henry Boxer, Richmond, Surrey)
