"In the days of my youth 'mid many a caper,
I drew with my nose a mere inch from the paper;
But now that I am older and of the elite,
I find I can't focus inside of two feet." John Updike
Recently, I've been painting a self-portrait in the studio and also perusing "The Eye of the Artist" by ophthalmologists Michael Marmor and James Ravin (St. Louis,1997, Mosby-Year Book). They, and the contributors to the book, explore in depth the function of sight in art and the various diseases and problems of the eye that artists face. The chapters on specific artists are quite illuminating and a surprising number of Impressionists had difficulties with their eyes: Degas, Renoir, Cassatt (who gave up painting entirely due to her lack of vision), Monet, Pissaro.
Most of these problems occurred as they grew older. I, too have problematic sight and it is of concern to me since art is my life blood. I am glad to say that I do not have the drastic cataracts of Monet, or the gradual blindness of Cassatt. What I do have is presbyopia, which any number of us get as we get older. I was fortunate to get almost to the age of fifty without glasses, even more so since all other members of my family wore glasses from an early age. Now, however, I have at least 4, maybe 5 different focal lengths. I have reading glasses, a work pair of bifocals- the lower part of which is set at arm and brush length, the upper part to see the model on the stand-- and a pair of computer glasses. I have always had great distance vision, but lately, road signs down the highway are blurring.
So, twixt teaching and painting and home, I carry several pairs of glasses with me which is cumbersome,to say the least, including a store-bought pair I use solely for seeing what's on the shelves of the grocery, and a small magnifier in my left pants pocket for the tiny print of product labels, etc.. I also have not one but two lazy eyes. My right drifts downward and my left drifts upward. Usually not a problem, and the optician puts a "crystal" in each lens to correct it. I have always had a physical awkwardness, bumping into things, banging doorknobs with the back of my hand, never real sure on my feet when fast moves are called for. This kept me from most sports (golf was ok), and my solution was just to learn to walk and move slowly, deliberately, all my life. I thought that I had a peripheral vision problem, especially below my eyes, but my doctor said it was my lazy eyes. Whenever I move my head quickly, especially down, my two eyes scramble to align themselves, giving me a moment of unsuredness. She says this is common with folks who have lazy eyes.
I have generally been happy with the bifocals, with which I paint. I have had to make some changes. For instance, I must keep the painting below my eye level to fall within the lower bifocal lens, and I slant back the easel therefore to keep the canvas at a right angle to my line of sight. I've always taught my students to work as vertically as they could in order to keep the differentiation between what they see (the model or scene) and what they put on the canvas to a minimum. And here I am, often having to take my eyes off the scene/model to look down.
There's also something else that has been bugging me, especially with this self-portrait. I've always been able to draw the human form, and anything for that matter in proportion. I've always told my students is that if you can master two things, proportion and perspective, you will be leaps and bounds ahead of the great mass of other artists. Perhaps I've been inordinately proud of my ability to draw what I see in exacting scale, that you might say that it is karma that I am noticing incremental proportion questions creeping into my art-- and I attribute this to my bifocals. Let me take you through my thought process as I painted.
This is the first pass-through, where I block in the painting:
At this point, I'm putting in the areas of darks and lights, also drawing out the location and size of shapes. I notice that the arm is not proportional to the rest of the body. The shoulder should be farther over, and the elbow should be off the canvas. I make the correction:
I have moved the elbow off canvas, but the shoulder and hand don't feel right. Also I make the decision to move the hand up to a less lax position, which would, I hoped, offset the awkwardness of the forearm. What I see, both as I paint close to the canvas, and as I step back, is an arm and hand that are out of whack with the rest of the body.
I've made several changes as I added color. I've moved the shoulder and the arm farther to the left, making them much more in proportion. You can see the disembodied floating hand that I've moved up, made more active, holding a brush. The placement of the hand should solve the awkwardness of the angle of the arm once it is painted in. I'll also need to darken the shadows of the hand to match the face. But here is where I am a bit visually perturbed: take a look. Is that hand out of proportion? Isn't it just a bit small? Rarely have I, in my years of drawing/painting the figure had to worry about proportion since it came naturally, but now I must, because my eyes are getting older and lenses, as well as correcting, can distort, however slightly and fool oneself.
So this is where I'm at. But it is a minor dilemma compared to the cataracts of Monet or the macular degeneration of Georgia O'Keefe. No matter how personally concerned I am about my artist's eyes as I age, my consternation pales in comparison to my sister-in-law who is almost completely blind from glaucoma, or my wife and her other siblings who have or are at risk for glaucoma.
