Sidetracked Charley

Friday is the awaited cataract surgery on the right eye. This rapidly developing late unset cataract has been a daily surprise for me. And I have been looking for ways to explain it to myself and others. Today for instance my computer screen was painful to look at. It was just too white. And too bright. I toyed with putting sunglasses on over my reading glasses. The illustration above taken from Google Images really came closest to explaining what I have been going through just since January. With most people cataracts grow slow enough that they are almost unaware of them until they are removed and the colors are richer. To me the world seems too bright and everyday too much brighter. Night driving is out. Sunrises and sunsets can be painful. A flash of light blinding. And I understand for some people light even becomes painful. I have become very picky about light. As an artist I suppose I have always been sensitive to light but that is rather different. My studio has tons of ...

Rain, steam and speed by Turner Early in my return to painting I was asked frequently why I did not do traditional watercolors but instead used vivid colors. Where they got the idea that watercolors were always pastel in palette I had no idea because I had been exposed in college to Turner among others. But my reply to potential clients was that I painted what I remembered seeing. I would go out and take photographs and come back and upload them to my camera and always be a bit disappointed. I remembered the rocks redder, the sun brighter, the sky more vividly blue. A recent eye exam has shown that I have rapidly developing cataracts. And that has raised the question of what it is I do see. Did Turner also have cataracts and see the world blurry like I do without my glasses? El Greco, it is believed had a condition that elongated what he saw. So maybe his paintings were what he did see and not some artistic distortion. The creation of the camera gave rise to impressionism beca...