Blind Art 1

While I’ve never excelled at it, like I’ve never really excelled at anything, I’ve always had a passion for drawing. I backed out of going to art school as a teenager when I realised that my hereditary, incurable, deteriorating eye disease was going to make visual expression rather difficult. I still remember that moment at secondary school when, while looking down at something I was drawing, I noticed I couldn’t see details that were merely an inch apart, thereby making it impossible to establish symmetry.

The state education system at the time had also declared that drawing could not be deemed “art”, so my labour of pencilled love had to be relegated to “prep work”. I ended up half-heartedly cobbling together a collage in about a day, giving me a GCSE grade of C. Who on Earth gets a C in art?! Me, that’s who.

Since having my artistic bubble burst by two nasty pricks, I generally stuck to a looser sense of reality. Not exactly abstract or expressionistic, but drawing a world without straight lines. I suppose more Vincent van Gogh than Edward Hopper.

Between leaving school in 1996 and leaving society about ten years ago, my drawing was confined mainly to doodling in the office. Until, that is, my eyesight predictably made even those low amitions almost impossible. Well, I’ve been experimenting recently with implements of artistic expression that will work for me, such as charcoal pencils and felt-tipped pens. It turns out that the thickest black marker pen I can possibly find is the way forward. Now all I need is a pad of paper larger than A5.

So, ladies and gentlemen, here are my first two efforts. Drawing something from my imagination is preferred, as I can hardly screw up a subject that isn’t there. And I would screw it up. Exaggerated landscapes and houses seem to come naturally to my busy fingers.

I shall endeavour to acquire a larger canvass and thicker markers but, for now, this is what I’ve got as a trial run.

Or “prep work” as those state fascists would deem it.

See you at the exhibition opening, darlings.

Toodles!