No Limitations to Creativity

If you are someone who has faced personal challenges and limitations in life, then artist Phil Hansen wants to hear your story. Phil has faced his own personal challenges as an artist when he began to experience numbness and tremors in his hands after years of repetitive motions. When he was told he had permanent nerve damage in his hands from years of making pointillist illustrations, he soon chose to quit art school. 
     In a defining moment, a neurologist later encouraged him to "embrace the shake". Then it dawned on him that he could look at his limitation as the source of his creativity rather than the end of it. By embracing his limitation, he soon found liberation, and has since pursued a variety of accomplished artwork in the interim.

Soon after telling his personal story at a TED talk this last February, he had many people willing to share their own accounts of struggle and success. For the last month, Hansen has been sharing these narratives of personal struggle in a 9 x 13 foot artwork created entirely of text with his sharpie. He is also soliciting more stories by phone and on his website, and in a Kickstarter campaign to fund this artwork. With less than 3 days left to go, his Kickstarter campaign has been fully funded, but you may still contribute and show your support. And take in his TED talk and be inspired. As Hansen so elegantly reminds us, "limitation can also be liberation." It's just how you look at it.