My final major project aims to capture my lived experience (from September 2018 onwards) of double retinal detachment as accurately, honestly, and authentically as possible. Through a multidisciplinary approach I aim to make sense of what happened, during a highly traumatic time, to my vision and try to project what I am able to see now. I will take the viewer on a journey through my blind lens.
It is engaging and impactful as, from my research, very little else exists like this in the world that is easily accessible. While disabled artists exist, and to a much lesser extent, blind artists, this kind of work is not readily available to sighted people - let alone that is from the hand of a blind maker. It holds incredible value, personal significance, and aura.
It is relevant to my practice as a blind artist as the double retinal detachment and events surrounding it affected my ability to finish my studies at the time and continue to illustrate in the first instance. It affected every aspect of my life and I needed to rebuild myself and problem solve how I do everything - including making art.
This project will incorporate a series of abstract expressionist paintings to portray my blindness, a direction I have found myself headed in this past year. The new specialist skills I wish to employ for this project include painting onto canvas. I wish to push myself away from painting, albeit naively, on paper and card stock and onto something with more esteem and value that can be exhibited. This will afford me specialist and profession skills upon and beyond graduation.
The strategy I wish to employ for this project are as follows - to adhere to three briefs in an open studio format to allow for experimentation and exploration of the blind lens:
• Brief 1: To paint at least TWO abstract expressionist paintings per week, conveying my blind lens, for the digital publication.
• Brief 2: To produce a series of experimental monoprints, incorporating Braille print.
• Brief 3: To produce a series of experimental monoprints, conveying a blind lens.
• Content: This will be authorial, educational content of lived events. It aims to be innovative and ambitious.
• Context: Publishing and design. It is relevant at a time when disability is still overlooked and is not at the forefront of representation, when it should be in this day and age.
• Processes: Lens, abstract expressionist painting on canvas, poetry. It is challenging and skilful and aims to push me beyond the foundation I built in the Context of Practice module.
I am looking to the abstract expressionist field of contemporary practice, drawing inspiration from Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, and other such painters such as Joan Mitchell and Willem de Kooning, to inform the visual language and surface texture of my canvases to give the impression of floaters and decaying sight before detachment.
A potential output will be a digital publication or Zine housing my monoprint experiments, canvas paintings, poetry, photographs, and reflections as a blind person. I want to keep outcomes open at this stage as I have locked myself into a set of definitive outcomes in the past and found it difficult to commit to demanding deliverables. I want to keep it broad to allow for experimentation and surprise. I work best with breathing space where I can enjoy the process of making, and experience the opportunity that painting onto a canvas can afford me - freedom. I will reflect on my progress regularly and monitor next steps in the project.
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