Challenges

Blind Artist Vision: blog by Stella De Genova

I’ve worked on a painting the last couple of weeks and I found it to be quite a challenge. There are geometric angles, lighting and color changes and human figures.  Then I thought that maybe I could write something about challenges in this blog ... but where to begin?

If we think about the grand scale of challenges in real life, painting a picture is nothing.  People are trying to find ways to survive in war zones.  Our own country is facing challenges and we will all have to decide which direction we should be going and who we want to be in the world.  These are challenges that will not be fixed in a day.

We also all deal with personal challenges on a daily basis.  You may have health worries, or financial problems, or relationship issues. If we haven’t already, we will all go through these things at some point in our lives.

And then, of course, there are those of us who live challenged with a disability.  Blindness is certainly a daily challenge.  I have a great network of friends and family who are always there for me but it is still frustrating when I want to do something that I find I can’t do on my own. 

Even so, I have acclimated to blindness because for me, it’s been a gradual process since childhood.  There was night blindness and mytopia.  By my 20’s, I had started losing enough peripheral vision to be categorized as legally blind.  It was constantly harder to see in dimming light and I needed more and more light.  Now I’ve lost the ability to see colors and anything more than a couple of feet away is a blur.  Some days I feel like complaining but since my condition is gradual, it has always given me time to adjust.  For people who lose their sight suddenly or late in life, of ocurse, it can be much more disconcerting and very scary.

Going back to my painting, this small challenge pushes me to focus and push myself just a little more.  I think getting past the small challenges, whatever they may be, gives us inner strength and prepares us for the big challenges we are all bound to run into.  I almost chose to not work on this painting but I have to say, I’m glad I did.  I took my time and worked on each element of the painting on its own as well as the picture as a whole. My paintings never look exactly like the reference photograph, but they are my interpretation.  I think it turned out pretty well, and the client I did this painting for is happy with it.  Every time I finish a painting, I feel like I’ve gotten past a hurdle and it makes me a little more prepared for the next one, small or large.

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