“Nikheel Iyer’s life has been a long and arduous journey filled with challenges and hard work. He has been hearing impaired since birth and does not communicate through sign language. Instead, he uses hearing aids, cell phones, Facetime, transcription services, speech-to-text systems, and much more to communicate with others. Most of all, Iyer expresses himself through art, which has interested him since he was young. […] Currently, he is taking further advanced art certification courses from the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture, NYC. Iyer feels he has learned a lot from each of these places, both in art and in life, and he continues to learn new things every day.

“Art is a tool that transcends all barriers of communication, language, culture, and vocabulary,” he says. “It is here to stay, now and forever, waiting to be explored and expanded to greater heights and depths of human emotions and experiences. Human angst and universal issues of the self and our cosmos, need creative expression.””

Read the full article here.