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JENNIFER LUDDEN, host: Now we introduce you to a young artist. Though she's only 22, she's had several exhibitions, won an international art residency and her work has hung in the Smithsonian Institution. Sunny Taylor's story is not just one of talent but also of determination. She was born with a joint and muscular disability that limits the use of her arms and legs. NPR's Susan Stone visited her studio in Athens, Georgia, and has this report.

(Soundbite of train)

SUSAN STONE reporting:

When a train goes by this small wooden house, you almost expect it to run right through Sunny Taylor's studio. Even that probably wouldn't stop her from painting. Not much would. Sunny Taylor's works are realist portraits in the classical style. They're life-sized or larger, meticulously rendered in oil paint, layered and richly textured. Sunny Taylor was home schooled and is a self-taught artist.

Ms. SUNNY TAYLOR (Artist): I really, like, literally spent my high school years staring at paintings and teaching myself how to see, how to align things and how to see colors. I just painted for hours and hours and hours.

STONE: Painting for hours would tire any artist, but it's particularly exhausting for Sunny Taylor. She can't use her hands to paint, so she holds the brush with her mouth and sometimes paints with her toes.

Ms. TAYLOR: And it's a workout 'cause I will stand up and I will get on the floor and I'll just stretch in all sorts of odd ways to be able to reach them 'cause they're all so big. And so it's physically exhausting and especially for my neck.

STONE: Though Sunny can use her wheelchair to be lifted up and down, she prefers to really throw herself into painting. At times, the huge paintings topple over on her. Sunny's found another way to approach these giant canvases, by laying them on their side.

Ms. TAYLOR: Then the whole painting on sideways or upside down is actually really helpful 'cause that's an old trick actually. It's just look at the paintings in the mirror to turn them upside down and then you'll see every little teeny mistake, and so actually if you can paint it upside down, then you know it's going to look good right side up.

STONE: Sunny Taylor's latest exhibit was in downtown Atlanta at the Arts for All Gallery. It's part of the VSA arts of Georgia, a group that helps disabled people participate in the arts. Executive director Jay Tribby stands captivated in front of a large picture called "Robbie and Julian." The nearly wall-sized canvas shows two young men in elaborate red military-style coats. One holds an armadillo. One plays the musical saw. They sit on painstakingly rendered golden hay that gleams in painted light. Behind them is a dark background of intricate texture. They could be 16th century minstrels in a painting of the time.

Dr. JAY TRIBBY (Executive Director, Arts for All Gallery): It's very hard for me not to imagine Caravaggio having painted it. It just happens to be Caravaggio who lives in Athens painting members of the alternative music scene in Athens.

STONE: These Athens hipsters share exhibit space with intense self-portraits of Sunny as a baby and young child. Nearby hangs a detailed image of a woman's back twisted by spina bifida. On canvas, it's beautiful and sculptural. And there's an odalisque, a nude of a woman named Bethany who has brittle bone disease.

Dr. TRIBBY: Many times, Western aesthetics would militate against a nude portrait of someone like the person in this painting, and I think that the choice is a bold one, but it's also one that's very consistent with Sunny's interest in painting her friends and capturing their souls. Also it's consistent with her interest in being something of an activist on disability issues.

STONE: Jay Tribby's VSA Gallery had to work hard to convince Sunny Taylor to exhibit here. A few years ago, she wouldn't have considered it.

Ms. TAYLOR: I refused to apply for disability arts things and hated talking about the fact that I painted with my mouth and all that because of the fact that that just, you know, is what people catch on to. But I think as I've also come to realize that it is very, very much a political issue, and I think that it's really important to talk about the fact that I'm disabled and I think it's really important to talk about how I became disabled.

STONE: Sunaura Celeste Taylor was born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita. It's a joint and muscular disorder, and in her case, the cause is believed to be industrial pollution in her birth city Tucson, Arizona. A few years ago, she took the personal challenge of painting herself nude. At first glimpse, the work is shocking, intimate, a full-standing portrait of a disabled body. Sunny sees it as political.

Ms. TAYLOR: And the painting is called "Self Portrait with Trichloroethylene."

STONE: That's one of the chemicals that contaminated water in south Tucson for more than 30 years. In 1984, almost 2,000 residents, including Sunny's family, filed a lawsuit claiming cancer, birth defects and other injuries and they won. The region is now a Superfund site, and Sunny is now an activist.

Ms. TAYLOR: That's something that I struggle with very much is how to participate in painting, you know, what one would call their political identity or whatever or thoughts without it just turning into advertisements or without it just being trite, you know? And the only way that I feel like I've done it naturally thus far is with images of myself.

STONE: In Sunny Taylor's studio, a new image is slowly evolving on the canvas in shades of creamy yellow and strong purple. It's the largest painting she's done so far: the images of a woman standing on a tree stump, almost growing out of it.

Ms. TAYLOR: When growing up, I used to have this idea that being a tree would be quite wonderful, and so this is, like, the closest I'd come to being a tree.
STONE: It's Sunny's latest self-portrait. Susan Stone, NPR News.

LUDDEN: You can see a gallery of Sunny Taylor's art at our Web site, npr.org.

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Read entire article at: NPR: All Things Considered