Chris Rush draws portraits of unusual children and adults, often with physical anomalies and disabilities. These individuals have rarely been included in our cultural record, and are nearly invisible in the everyday world. When we do happen upon them, we tend to avert our eyes.

In Rush’s drawings, we begin to comprehend these essential characters—to draw close to their strangeness and see something of ourselves waiting there.

Rush is no crusader for children with disabilities. To be sure, there is dignity to these portraits. His empathy is evident. He has enough sensitivity to draw these children in disarmingly human and complex ways. And, in his mastery with the conté crayon medium, he swathes them in a light so beautiful one feels a transcendent grace at work. But what compels Rush is a deep curiousity that borders on the subversive. And he does nothing to lessen the punch. Strangeness and wonder collide magnificently.

Rush does studies from life. He began volunteering at a facility in 1997, with the agreement that he be allowed to sketch in the quiet hours. “Quite a few of my subjects,” he writes, “have never spoken and I’ll never know what they are thinking. When I’ve shown finished portraits to those who can speak, they often have no comment. Occasionally they laugh.”