Obstacles don't deter woman from her artwork

By Karin Admiraal
Post contributor

Patty Kempf wears special headgear that allows her to select her preferred brush to create her paintings. The 39-year-old doesn't let her cerebral palsy stop her from doing her art work.

Patty Kempf's painting of four daisies was made into a greeting card.

As a foundation for her paintings, Patty Kempf gets a bit of help from her mother, who pencils in a basic form. From there, Kempf paints on the colors and shapes she prefers.

A self-taught artist, Patty Kempf is beginning to see her hobby start paying off. She has sold a few of her pieces

At first glance, what stands out about 39-year-old Price Hill resident Patty Kempf are all the things that she cannot do.

Cerebral palsy prevents her from speaking, getting around without a wheelchair, and controlling her hands.

But more striking than Kempf's disability are the things that she can do. With the help of a DynaVox, a machine that lets her use a silver strip on her glasses to point to words and letters on a screen, she can carry on a conversation and use the computer to e-mail friends or create pictures. With the help of an automatic page-turner that an electrical engineer friend invented, she can read books.

Perhaps most importantly for her, with the help of a headset equipped with a brush holder, she can paint. Recently, spring of 2006, Kempf's artwork was part of an exhibit called "Same Difference: Artists with and without Disabilities Working Side by Side" at the Time-Warner Cable Artworks Gallery, 881 Race. St.

Kempf paints, in watercolor and acrylics, with splashes of bright color and sweeps of texture. She creates pictures from her own mind: "what I feel like," she says. She also chooses predrawn pictures for some of her artwork, filling in black lines with color and sometimes adding shells or other collage elements in a way that makes the finished product something entirely her own.

Tom Lohre, a Cincinnati artist who has coached Kempf for several years and who helps her market her artwork through his Abled Arts online site (tomlohre/abledarts/kempf.htm), called her work "perfect."

"The technique of using a headstick gives you a real incredible stroke," he said. "It's personal. It's exciting. It's not like anyone else's stroke."

Kempf said that she has been painting all her life, motivated by her mother, who, she says, keeps telling her "to make it fun, not work."

"It started out as a pastime, something to keep her busy," said her mother, Rita Kempf.

She said Patty likes to be busy, and, especially after graduating from high school in 1988, needed something to keep her from becoming bored.

But painting has grown into more than an idle hobby for Kempf. She has shown her work at exhibitions and sold several paintings over the past few years.

DynaVox Systems, which makes Kempf's communication augmenter, used her "Christmas Dog" picture on holiday cards last year. Recently, balloon designer Steven Jones commissioned her to do a mermaid painting for BalloonTown USA, a balloon exhibition and fund-raiser at St. Rita School for the Deaf. The painting was given away in a raffle, and Jones was thrilled when he turned out to be the winner (he promised that the contest was not rigged).

"We gave her complete artistic freedom, and I was very impressed with the painting," he said. "Now we have a really cool souvenir of the event."

Jones was impressed not only with the painting, but also with Kempf herself.

"It is absolutely amazing the patience she possesses," he said.

Kempf spends time every week at Visionaries and Voices, part of Essex Studio in Clifton. Visionaries and Voices is a studio for self-taught artists with disabilities. There, Kempf can work with adjustable easels and a variety of adaptive equipment. She goes to the studio with a group of other artists from United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) of Greater Cincinnati, where she is also involved in other classes during the week.

"She's really motivated. She's very creative," said Ilene Kempf (a distant relation), an occupational therapist who works with the art program at UCP. "This is an opportunity for her to act on that creativity and get the things out that she has inside."

Ilene Kempf said that artistic self-expression, whether through music or the visual arts, is important for people with cerebral palsy.

"A lot of people with CP have spent their whole lives not communicating anything, not even simple wishes," she said. "For people who have vision, it's much, much better to be able to express it."

She added that because it can be hard for them to get around, people with cerebral palsy can have lots of time to develop their creative side.

"There's a lot of down time when you're not free to get up and walk away," she said. "I think it's really a really freeing experience to be able to put something in a visual form."

At home, in the bungalow where she's lived all her life, Kempf paints at the kitchen table. The same friend who made the page turner also created a brush holder, so Kempf can have several different sizes of brush available to fit interchangably on the end of a pointer attached to a headpiece.

With her canvas or paper on an easel propped in front of her, and a palette of paints and water set on the table nearby, Kempf can create pictures of flowers, animals or landscapes.

Lohre, who owns three of Kempf's paintings, said Patty's dedication has been one of her greatest assets. "She doesn't really let her disability handicap her."

Publication date: 03-20-2006