Painting the Chills

Fingerprint drawing a portrait of The Chills' lead singer Martin Phillipps in a noisy atrium during school holidays may not be the best idea. Particularly when the artist, Tom Fox, has autism spectrum disorder, meaning his senses can be easily overloaded and emotions intensified. “It was pretty challenging,” he says of drawing live in front of spectators on Level 1 at Tūhura Otago Museum in Dunedin. The echoey atrium has marble, high ceilings and huge windows and the September school holiday programme was in full swing. Tom used a mortar and pestle to grind chalk pastels, which he painstakingly applied