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Stephen Wiltshire is a 49 years old who showed speech difficulties since he was a child. He was diagnosed with autism when he was 3 years old. He is a savant: a person who, despite having severe cognitive impairment, he has developed extraordinary abilities. His talent was discovered as early as his school days: upon returning to the classroom after trips to London where he grew up, he preferred to use pencils and paints to perfectly reproduce all the monuments he had seen. Tapping into his passion for art, they were able to teach him to speak.

Not surprisingly, his first words were “paper” and “pen.” Thus when he was only nine years old, his career took off and with it his life. By controlling the world through a pen, he managed to gain control over himself. He even went so far as to earn a college degree. When he feels like drawing, he wastes no time, pulls out the necessary supplies from his bag and immediately starts sketching a panorama. He loves to ride public transportation alone in search of inspiration, but there is no shortage of tasks he performs on a daily basis to maintain his routine, such as his sandwich, which is always the same and at 1:30 p.m. sharp.

Thanks to his talent, it only takes Stephen a few minutes in a helicopter to memorize and then reproduce in perfect detail and perspective the city he flew over. Today he is an established illustrator. He has his own gallery in the City and is invited to the biggest events to create skylines of his host cities on panels dozens of meters long. He has traveled all over the world, from the United States to Australia. His is not just an already extraordinary gift of memory, however. His work goes beyond the sterile transcription of shapes on paper. Stephen masters a variety of painting techniques, and in his works he expresses all his soul and experience, as only a great artist is able to do.

Excerpted from Extraordinary Lives
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