Finding artistic freedom
It was only after his retirement at age 60 that Lewis Constantine picked up a paintbrush at Tutti Arts, unearthing an extraordinary talent as an artist, triggering global opportunities, creative pathways and, most profoundly, a new Lewis.
To see Lewis Constantine stand in front of the canvas and create his bold, colourful abstract paintings is to see a man who is in tune with his extraordinary artistic talent.
What is harder to fathom, however, is that this prolific and vibrant artist only discovered his unique abilities four years ago, at the age of 60.
For the four decades prior to that, Lewis worked at Orana, a local organisation which provides employment opportunities and support for people living with disability.
Lewis’s regular tasks included packing show bags for the Royal Adelaide Show and manually making a particular component for light switches.
“My arm got a bit sore,” Lewis says.
Lewis’s older brother Darcy, 69, his biggest supporter and advocate, estimates Lewis made 1000 components a day, 5000 a week, before he retired from the Netley-based organisation in 2019 after 42 years of service.
Lewis with his adored mother Evelyn.
“He loved it and they were good to him,” Darcy says. “He was with people who treated him well, but it was the same thing, every day.”
Not long after Lewis’s retirement, Darcy came across Tutti Arts, a South Australian disability arts organisation that fosters the careers of learning disabled and neurodivergent artists.
Darcy met Patricia Wozniak, Tutti’s visual arts coordinator and together they arranged for Lewis to come and try his hand at painting, initially as a hobby.
“Before that he’d had a go at some colouring-in books, and done a bit of painting, but nothing much,” Darcy says.
Lewis’s innate talent became immediately apparent, and after only a couple of days at Tutti, Darcy says Patricia came to him and said, “Wow, you know your brother is so talented, he’s a
real natural”.
“So, he started at Tutti two days a week and that went to three and it just grew and now he is a full-time artist with exhibitions, and he’s been doing it for four years.
“I call him Colonel Sanders because Lewis started when he was 60 years old, which was when Sanders had an idea for a chicken shop, which went on to become KFC.
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“Lewis is the same, he’s a Colonel Sanders.”
Since he began at Tutti, Lewis has had several exhibitions, including at the Adelaide Fringe, and his large-scale paintings are much sought-after, hanging in private collections, in surgeon’s rooms and even as part of a collaboration at Sydney’s Luna Park.
His vibrant and colourful works reference Lewis’s love of popular culture, particularly his favourite television shows including M*A*S*H, Spongebob Squarepants, Judge Judy, Flash Gordon, Wheel of Fortune and Seinfeld.
Lewis as a young child with his father Paul and older siblings Nick and Darcy.
“I do Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and I like to watch Pawn Stars and House,” Lewis says. But it is the way that painting has transformed Lewis as a person that is the true success story here, according to Darcy.
“I cannot believe how art has opened him up and created a new person, in the way he talks, in the way he expresses himself; he laughs at things now,” he says.
“It’s as if it has triggered something within him and he’s become a person who sees life with a zest. He says funny things and he’ll ask me questions. He has conversations and he can talk to people. This wasn’t Lewis. It has opened something inside him.”
The president of the Tutti Arts board, Beth Neate, says the organisation challenges the old conventions of who gets to be an artist.
“We believe wholeheartedly in the rights of learning disabled and neurodivergent people to express themselves creatively and participate fully in the arts and cultural life,” Beth says.
Lewis’s talent has also attracted grants and awards, as well as eager buyers. He presented his first solo exhibition Truly Scrumptious in 2022 and his work has been exhibited in other solo and group exhibitions across Adelaide and Sydney.
But it was a trip to Seoul in South Korea in October last year, as part of a cross-cultural artistic residency, that officially signified Lewis’s incredible artistic achievements and how far he has come in his new-found career.
Through a partnership between Tutti Arts, Jung Yoon, founder of Co-art Studio in South Australia and Jehyun Shin from Korean art organisation IZZA IZZA, Lewis travelled to Seoul with a support team that included Darcy and his family, Tutti’s art support worker Dani Reynolds, Patricia Wozniak and others. Lewis spent a week working in the Artspace Seochon studio and finished the week off with an exhibition, along with works by Korean disabled artist Euihyun Shin.
The South Korean collaboration will be extended next month, when Shin will undertake a residency at Tutti Arts.
Lewis with Darcy, who has been his constant supporter and biggest advocate.
Tutti creative director Gaelle Mellis explains: “Cross-cultural exchange breaks down barriers, fosters international connections and elevates disability arts practice globally.”
For Lewis, the trip was the chance to explore new cultural horizons and showcase his work to an international audience. A highlight was using hanji, Korean paper, for the first time and Lewis says he tapped into his artistic inspiration by walking through the local Seoul markets.
“I bought a Korean hat and it says, ‘Bad Guy’,” he laughs. “I want to go back to Korea, because I liked the food and it was fun.”
But the true joy inherent in the Korean trip and the inspiration of Lewis’s creative awakening is best understood in the context of his life before art.
Growing up, the family, including older brother Nick and younger sister Christally, lived in Brooklyn Park. Dad, Paul, had a fruit and vegetable store, and then moved to work at Menz Biscuits, while mum Evelyn worked the night shift in a factory.
But life changed irrevocably for the family when Lewis was two years old and contracted a virus which turned out to be encephalitis meningitis.
He spent three months in hospital and when his parents were finally allowed to bring him home, they were told their son had suffered long-term damage to his brain.
“This virus was so horrific,” says Darcy, who was five years old at the time. “He came home and that was probably the most difficult thing for my mum, to try and look after him with these three kids, all young, and she had her mother living with us, who’d had a stroke, and was bedridden.
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“It was tough, there was no help in those days, no help from the government. They basically told my mother to put Lewis in a home, and she said, ‘No, he’s my son’.”
Childhood during the 1970s and ’80s was tough for Lewis, when societal attitudes towards disability were riddled with ignorance and fear.
“In the Greek community people would say to their kids, ‘don’t get too close or you’ll catch the disease’,” Darcy says. “Lewis went through all the cracks in the system and there was nowhere for him to go.”
The prolific painter is gifted at laying colour on top of colour on the canvas and the end result is bold and sophisticated works that are in demand with collectors.
As a young child, Lewis attended an organisation called Minda which supports people with intellectual disability, before the decision was made to send him to a mainstream high school.
“That was the worst thing they could have done,” Darcy says. “Kids could be brutal, so I took him under my wing and protected him but that only lasted about a year. I used to say to Mum, ‘he can’t be here at this school’. It was a very hard time.”
Lewis was eventually taken out of the school system, and spent his days at home watching television, before he finally began attending Orana regularly more than 40 years ago.
Darcy adds: “One of the best paintings he’s ever done was a massive work with nine smaller art works on a big canvas. Nine different stories of nine different shows he watches, a big mural. Then he started relating to things like his love of the Royal Show, all abstract with lots of bold colour. Then he did some black and white works which were very popular.”
Darcy says he once spoke with South Australian artist Silvana Angelakis about Lewis’s outstanding talent, and she explained it like this: “Have you ever tried to put colour on top of colour? They might run into each other and go grey. Have a look at Lewis’s paintings. It’s colour on top of colour on top of colour and how he does it, I don’t know.”
Lewis’s works mirror his attitude to life – ambitious, experimental, adventurous and more than anything, full of colour. He works closely with Tutti arts support worker Tom Squires and, more recently, Sam Howie, to produce his works, often on huge canvases, and with titles such as Sesame Street, Girl Holding Flower and Seinfeld Two.
Tutti’s Patricia Wozniak says: “For a lot of artists, when we see a big canvas, we can be really afraid, whereas Lewis is like, ‘yes!’,” she says.
Two of Lewis’s colourful artworks.
“A lot of us are in awe of Lewis’s work and just that confidence and it comes up in his work and it’s so strong.
“Some people say they want to be an artist, but they won’t put the effort in, they won’t have that passion and enthusiasm, whereas Lewis always has that. He’ll try anything, he’s always up for collaboration and he’s so helpful with things.
“Lewis is probably the most prolific, most enthusiastic artist that we have. It’s great to see people start their career like this, later in life.”
As Lewis says: “It makes me feel happy”.
Darcy adds: “We are Christians and Greek Orthodox and we believe that God has given him this gift.
“Lewis has had exhibitions where he’s sold 20 or 30 paintings in a night and he’s just a natural. To me, it’s karma for all those people and how he was treated. I wish they could see him now.”
Painting has also brought Lewis, who lives with Darcy, his wife Trish and their adult children, Paul and Ellie, closer to his brother.
“Lewis goes to the football with me, he’s a mad Crows fan,” Darcy says. “He also goes to 36ers basketball games and to art galleries and he’s been to Perth and Canberra.
“He’s a different person. To me, the joy at seeing him so happy at 5.30 in the morning, when I have to explain to him that we’re not going to Tutti until 7.30 or 8 and that he needs to go back to bed. I’ve never seen anyone get out of bed and be so cheerful.
“Going to Tutti and discovering art have been the best things that ever happened in his life. My mother would be so happy. I mean this is the guy who sat in the lounge room for years watching TV. Now, the world is his to explore.”
For more information on Lewis Constantine’s art work visit tutti.org.au.
The article originally featured in the February 2025 SALIFE magazine.
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