Are You an Artist with a Disability or Chronic Illness?
You may not know this about me…Im a legally bind artist. I have made a few videos about this on my YouTube channel, although not that many videos, maybe two or three. However, for a year and a half I did have a monthly live stream dedicated to the YouTube, blind community. Because I am an artist with a vision disability. In the video included in this blog, you can learn more about it. I’d like to, get in touch with other artists with disabilities or chronic illness. It would be nice to create a community possibly on Facebook. Please let me know if you may be interested in that?
I believe there are more of us out there than we realize. It’s kind of like a hidden community of people. So many of us have an invisible disability. That’s what mine is although I’m legally blind. Since most people do not know that blindness is on a spectrum that begins with 20/200 vision and then goes all the way to total blindness with all kinds of different blindness in between. so since I am at the high end of the spectrum, where blindness begins, it’s an invisible disability. I have no mobility issues. However, I must use a magnifying glass most all day long for reading and spot checking in spot reading things. My magnifying glass hangs around my neck all day long . So since I have no mobility issues, my disability is mostly invisible. Please share with me in the comments or reply to this via email and let me know if you’re a visual artist with a disability.
Today I am writing this because I am depressed. It is quite a struggle even though I’ve been doing it for around 20 years to practically live my life by looking through a magnifying glass. It’s just really getting to me today. When I’m feeling like this… my alternative is to listen to music or an audiobook or exercise, such as taking a walk, even while I listen to an audiobook or music as well. Anything so I don’t have to use my eyes as much. But today I guess I was feeling sorry for myself, and just drained And didn’t engage in any of the positive alternative things I could’ve done. And I’m writing this blog via speech to text, which I find so very helpful. Technology really can be such a wonderful thing!
A little more about me and my vision disability… I was unknowingly born with this extremely rare, hereditary retinal disease. Both my parents had to have recessive genes for me to be born with this. And I have the even more rare kind that did not present itself in childhood. I had completely normal vision, not knowing I really had a rare retinal disease… Until my early 40s. That’s when the disease presented itself. I am so blessed to have at least completely normal vision for a big portion of my life. And it will not lead to total blindness as some other retinal diseases do. I’m so thankful for this as well! And it doesn’t stop me from doing my art work. How about you? Does your disability or chronic illness stop you from doing your art? Or do you have to make changes and workarounds for it? The way it impacts me the most is for doing highly detailed work which I try to avoid, but ultimately cannot avoid. Just the other day, I’m working on an 11 x 14“ painting of a woman and her face is very small since the painting a small. I had to adjust the expression on her face and had to wear my prescription, highly magnified glasses along with my tiniest, detail brush and get the lighting on the paining just right. It was very painstaking and I was so happy when I achieved the result that I wanted.
Because of my disability 10 years ago, I also began digital art on my iPad. I love creating digital art because I can hold the iPad right up to my face and zoom up things if I need to. Now I even create art that involve both mediums. I go back-and-forth, such as creating the composition for an acrylic painting first in the digital. Then I use the gridding system to grid it up onto the larger canvas. Then during the painting process, I might even make adjustments by taking a photo of it and working out color and composition digitally on my iPad . And because I don’t have the distance vision, either, by taking a picture, I can always see my artwork Much better in a photo.
So please remember… Share with me in the comments here or reply via email and let me know if you are an artist with a disability or chronic illness. Please share how you do with your issues. I’d love to get to know you better.
Artfully yours,
Diana