‘They keep telling us that there is no place for him’

Aaron Fenech’s face creases into a smile as he holds up a large paper covered with little lines he meticulously drew with a pencil. “The ruler,” he mumbles, when asked how he drew the equidistant lines of different lengths. “Then the colours… I like colours,” he adds with a shy smile as he reaches out to his pencil case to show off the rainbow of crayons inside it. The 25-year-old, who has Down’s syndrome, loves colours and has come up with his personal form of art. “This is his particular way of drawing. It’s his method. I don’t know where he learnt it from but he’s been doing it for a long time now. First he draws lots of lines with the ruler. Then he lines up his colours and meticulously starts colouring them in,” his mother Rita says. Her husband, Pio, adds: “What fascinates me is why he draws the lines in different directions. We never saw anything like this.” It can take weeks for Aaron to complete one of his colourful drawings. But lately this is dragging on into months since his interest has shifted elsewhere. He spends lots of his time seeing music videos on his laptop and, at the moment, one of his favourite songs is Gangnam Style. “Laptop. Music. I like a lot,” he says...