JOHOR BAHRU: Nine years ago, visual arts teacher Yuszairi Yusof was involved in a road accident that left him hospitalised for a month and on medical leave for almost 300 days because of the multiple injuries he sustained.
He is now categorised as a person with disability as his left hand, which was crushed in the accident, has limited mobility following the implantation of artificial joints.
Yuszairi, 40, who teaches at SMK Jalan Kota Tinggi, does not allow his disability to get in his way and is doing his part to motivate and help his students.
Every month, he allocates RM100 to RM200 out of his own pocket to buy art material for his students, many of whom are from low-income families, so they can take part in art exhibitions and competitions.
“I keep reminding them they can have a bright future pursuing careers in arts and that they can earn good money from it. In fact, a former student opened his own art studio and is doing well,” he told Bernama.
Yuszairi, who received the outstanding OKU teacher award at the state and district levels last year, was among 3,120 artists who took part in the Artgeng Community Exhibition at Kompleks Warisan Sultan Abu Bakar here recently.
With his support and encouragement, two of his students also joined in the exhibition and all 10 of their paintings, including Yuszairi’s works, were put on display. On top of that, eight bird-themed paintings by Yuszairi were bought by the Johor Heritage Foundation.
Yuszairi not only makes it a point to enter art competitions but also pushes his students to take part in them, as well as in exhibitions, to obtain certificates that are deemed valuable to an artist.
According to him, these certificates will be handy if they want to pursue higher studies in art.
He also said that society should change its attitude towards visual arts and refrain from treating it as a subject of little value.
“In other countries, art is highly regarded. Our society must start viewing art as a lucrative field. For me, if there is no art, there is no culture,” he said.
