Karissa Patel: Creating art about my experiences of growing up deaf (BSL)

Hi, my name is Karissa and I was born profoundly deaf in both ears, and have a cochlear implant. I’m 21 years old and received my first cochlear implant at Great Ormand Street when I was just 13 months old, and my second at the age of 4 (although I no longer use my second implant). I also have a twin sister who is severely deaf and wears hearing aids.

I have always loved drawing, from a very young age. My earliest memory with art is from when I was around two, when the Teacher of the Deaf used to come to our house to engage both my twin sister and I with activities that would encourage our communication development- a fair portion of this involved drawing. I remember my primary school teacher coming to visit me in nursery, when transitioning to mainstream school. I was too shy to speak to her, so I drew her a picture of a fairy instead!

Growing up, I continued to regularly create art and found my passion for drawing animals, wildlife, and scenes which show the beauty of the natural world. I now love working with graphite, coloured pencil and pastels, and enjoy producing pieces that are rich in colour, detail and texture. I also feel that being deaf gives us a unique relationship with the visual world, and hopefully that sensitivity finds its way into everything I draw.

I was raised orally and as the only deaf person in a mainstream school, I wasn’t very confident in my deaf identity.

It was in my mid-teens, when I began learning some BSL and discovering Deaf culture, that I started to see my deafness as something unique to embrace rather than hide. I was keen to educate my classmates and teachers about deafness and cochlear implants, however, being quite shy, I found it hard to put myself out there and articulate myself verbally.

Art became a medium in which I could express my experiences growing up deaf, as I didn’t have to translate it into words, but could show it through my drawings instead. Using graphite pencil, I created a series of drawings, based on my cochlear implant operation, in the style of stills from a silent movie. I also wanted to show my hearing peers the beautiful positives of being Deaf, and made an oil painting, using serene colours and placid lighting to depict the tranquil silence we experience when we switch off our hearing devices.

After leaving school, I went on to do an Art Foundation Course at Kingston University where I specialised in Illustration. For my Final Major Project, I wanted to draw on what I had learnt on the illustration course, to create more artwork which explored my experience being deaf- particularly childhood memories, and my recollections of audiology appointments at GOSH.

I created a charcoal drawing which encapsulated my memories of the room I would go for switch on and audiology tests. I did not have one set reference photo for this, so the room was created from key objects I recall and the games I used to play as part of audiology tests. My aim was for the drawing not to be an accurate depiction of the room, but rather a visual representation of my memories.

When I had completed it, I shared the piece with my friend Joni, who also has a cochlear implant – the drawing became a starting point for conversations about our shared experiences of audiology appointments in that exact same soundproof room at GOSH. It was so nice to be able to relate, particularly over being creeped out by the ‘monkey boxes’ (robotic boxed teddies found in the audiology room, used to ‘reward’ reaction to sound). It was interesting to reflect on how much my drawing was shaped by emotion and distorted recall (some, more memorable aspects of the room, like the teddy boxes are sharply detailed whilst other parts are more vague, filled with wires and boxes).

I was also really interested in using visual narratives to communicate my deaf journey and celebrate the visual richness and beauty of silence.  Novels created entirely with illustrations are quieter; unlike a book with words, pictures can be understood without a spoken inner voice -placing the hearing reader in a deaf person’s shoes, as they experience the story visually and in silence. This technique is used by Brian Selznick, (who is one of my favourite illustrators!) in his novel, ‘Wonderstruck’, which follows the story of two deaf characters (I highly recommend!) Similarly, I made a book, solely using illustrations, to narrate my experience of switch-on for my sequential implant.

My first implant was a huge success, and I have always found it really helpful. However, my second implant has not been so good; due to a poor switch on (the sound was introduced at full volume by accident). I always struggled to communicate in words what I heard, so my book visually details this experience, conveying the sensory overload that sometimes comes with receiving sound from a cochlear implant for the first time.

Using scribbles and static noise, I tried to depict what auditory information might first feel like to a brain that is not acclimatised to sound and does not have the neural pathways for understanding speech. I was keen to share this with the hearing world, to help debunk the misconception that it’s a magical light-switch moment, where a deaf person automatically becomes hearing. Hearing people often aren’t aware of the speech and language training that goes in to learn how to interpret the sounds we hear through our implants.

Currently, I am continuing to follow my passion for art and at the moment, am working as an illustrator for a children’s book about a Deaf teddy bear. I have also recently set up an Etsy account (see the link below), selling fine art prints and greetings cards of my work, and am very excited to see where that goes! I hope to keep creating more artwork to raise Deaf awareness, as well as doing commissions of people, animals and nature. To see more of my work you can find me on Instagram @drawingsbykarissa or Facebook (Karissa Draws)

I would love to hear from you if you have any questions, or would like to chat about my artwork, especially in relation to deafness and your own experiences from the early days of switch on. My email is karissa230@icloud.com.

Link to Karissa’s Etsy : https://www.etsy.com/shop/DrawingsbyKarissa?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

More of Karissa’s work: