Jamie Kenneth Banks

I used to think I just wasn’t a visual arts person. This limiting belief was scientifically proven, I insisted, when I was diagnosed with a disorder of visual processing.

Brains, of course, are plastic. Whatever my brain’s true visual limitations, I surely haven’t reached them.

So I got back into the visual during the pandemic, craving creative novelty. Why? A matter of principles. Ethically, I couldn’t teach in NYC and not know how to guide my students at museums. Ego-wise (the bigger push, of course), I’m stubborn. No-one’s gonna tell me I’m not capable of it–any “it”–and be right.

Here’s what my self-rewiring looked like:

I started with the visual art forms I knew I liked and was in some way already doing.

My annoying limiting belief didn’t extend to photography, which I’d explored since first grade at the synagogue’s after-school program and content in my high school’s darkroom (remember film, anyone?)

So I kept taking basic iPhone photos, but encouraged myself to look at it as “real” photography. That shift to craft-conscious mode made me stop and actually look more often, on the street home from the subway and on park trails. I pushed myself that tiny bit to get good angles–and felt good about it. I shared my results, too–yep, because it felt good.

I studied and remixed pre-made visuals.

My grad school mentor, an educational psychologist, suggested an adult coloring book, The Enchanted Forest, when I came to her about my diagnosis. It appealed to things I like about my brain, like good pattern-finding, curiosity, a dash of adventure-seeking, and wandering into rabbit holes. And it made art accessible by telling me what to do–color within the (fascinating, complex) lines–while leaving room for my creativity.

I made lots of bad art involving stuff I’m good at.

I didn’t know portrait photography or photo composition, but I did know the physics of ripples and rainbows.

By taking photos of things I had a more expert eye for, I amassed nature photos I thought would be decently interesting as a beginner photographer. I started with what I knew.

Instead of trying sketch notes to learn new topics, I mind-mapped my mythology lectures. I knew about Greek myth and about teaching.

The small dose of discomfort involved was swaddled in a sea of comfort and competence, such that I barely realized I was growing my art skills.

I reframed the unknown as familiar.

Sketching is just a form of storytelling, which I love and am good at.

Studying a painting is just another form of critical analysis, and I’m an avid close reader.

When I couldn’t face exhausting, overwhelming museums alone, I took my students with me through one gallery–then museum visits were lessons, which I know how to plan.

Choose Your Adventure…

Fifteen years on from my diagnosis and ten since I started any of this, I go on nerd-fugues to my friends at the Met and still share my photos (check out a few on this site). Just don’t ask me to draw anything except a realistic tree or human eye by hand.

And, since the way we do one thing is the way we do everything, this change has enabled others. When I’m intimidated by any new creative form, now, from short fiction to educational videos, I search broadly for ways to start and go first down the paths I’m most attracted to.