In August of this year, I traveled to Guadalajara to meet Llorenz, a young artist diagnosed with level three autism spectrum disorder. My visit took place at OTEA, a nonprofit organization focused on raising awareness, providing training, and adapting spaces to foster inclusion for people with autism. When I arrived at the space where Llorenz lives and creates, I found him sitting on a couch, eating corn on the cob and listening to music. Awkwardly, I greeted him with a wave of my hand, quickly realizing that I lacked the tools to truly connect with him or access his world. Shortly afterward, Karla—Llorenz’s mother—gave me a brief tour of the space and his artworks.

As I climbed the stairs of the house, I began to notice his early paintings hanging on the walls—small and medium-format canvases filled with intention and energy, each reflecting a part of himself. Seeing the sheer number of pieces he has produced this year made me realize that there is an almost obsessive relationship between him and painting—or rather, what could be described as a “fixed interest” (a term used to describe repetitive behaviors within the autism spectrum). This focus allows him to explore the medium with complete transparency and efficiency.

Artistic image-making in today’s world has been largely shaped by dominant Western culture, which increasingly legitimizes academic and formal art education as a viable method for institutionalizing prevailing ideologies, techniques, and styles. In this context, it is rare to encounter works that are genuinely honest and rooted in creative freedom from the outset. However, as I reviewed Llorenz’s body of work, I realized I was witnessing a truly authentic case of expressive freedom through abstraction and painting.

Like a sudden gust of wind, Llorenz will ask his mother or his support team for a canvas, and then—amid unfamiliar and unpredictable sounds and movements—the act of painting occurs. He has access to a variety of acrylic paints and materials, which he uses freely, without external guidance or discrimination. One element of his creative process that particularly caught my attention was the intermittent nature of both his pictorial production and intrinsic motivation, which—just as it appears—can vanish.

This results in works that are at times unfinished or marked by strong visual gestures that might already signify completion. Yet, with a new impulse, these same gestures can either evolve or be erased on the same surface. These spontaneous acts lend multiple layers of meaning to his work, transforming each painting into a kind of palimpsest—each layer of color revealing different emotional and mental states of the artist.

Llorenz began painting by imitating the gestures and actions he observed in his mother. Gradually, he developed his own intuitive method, utilizing colors, shapes, and textures that enable him to bypass the constraints of verbal language and create a new mode of communication—each canvas becoming a window into his sensory and human perception.

For me, it would be a mistake to classify or define the types of images Llorenz creates or to try to assign a specific meaning to what he expresses. While there may be precedents or parallels with certain movements such as Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting, what matters most is allowing Llorenz’s own voice and autonomy to unfold according to his unique perspective and exceptional reality. Still, it’s hard not to consider his process within the framework of Outsider Art, a term coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 to describe artistic creation that transcends cultural boundaries through freedom.

And that’s exactly what happens with Llorenz: the absolute freedom to paint and create from within a spectrum of realities that may present limitations—but can also be radically expansive.