Interrupted Vision
In March 2024 I nearly went blind.
Apparently, our eyeballs self-combusting as we age is a thing? I did not know that.
It all started when a black cobweb appeared in my vision while on holiday like someone had dropped ink into a jar of water, except this was my eyeball. A visit to the ophthalmologist in Bulgaria confirmed I’d had a haemorrhage but it didn’t look serious and would clear up after a few weeks. 10 days after the initial heamorrhage I put my head between my toes in a yoga class and when I stood up, the lower portion of my vision had become a blank void. There was nothing there. As though someone had wrapped plastic tape over my face, I could peek over the top but couldn’t see my hands unless I raised them above my nose.
I’ve often sat in my studio and considered how lucky I feel to be able to see. To really see. As artists, we use that sense so acutely and I’m sure it become stronger, more intense, and the thought of losing my vision would be beyond devastating. Imagine a runner losing their legs, or a singer losing their voice - of all the disabilities to have, going blind for me, would be catastrophic.
A trip to A&E confirmed I needed emergency surgery to save my sight. I was awake, chatting to the surgeon as he dismantled half my face and found 5 retinal tears in my eyeball. The recovery has been painful and at times depressing as questions remained over how much of my vision would return. I couldn't drive or do much painting - although I kept trying!
I couldn’t drive during my recovery, so I made art on the kitchen table with gouache. I made a series of paintings on paper. The contrasting colours vibrate in a way that reflects the experience I was having with my vision. Blue and red are at the opposite ends of the colour waveform and will vibrate when they are put side by side.
Do you know we’re made from stars? 2024
There’s an eighty percent chance you’ll see a forty percent improvement, 2024
A series of paintings made on pages from Watson’s Medical-Surgical Nursing and Related Physiology, 2024
You are classed as urgent, so we’ll see you in two weeks, 2024
But you’re better now, right? 2024
November 2024 - Cataract Surgery
I have been half-blind since February. Surgery to fix a detached retina left me with a blind spot and a rapidly developing cataract. The new glasses I got in June quickly became useless.
The cataract didn’t just blur my vision, it wasn’t a case of being short-sighted, it was a refractive error that gave me double and triple vision of anything high contrast (like text), and huge halos around lights that made driving after dark nearly impossible.
In November, I had cataract surgery that replaced the lens in my eye. It was painful. It wasn’t supposed to hurt that much, but apparently, the previous surgery left me more sensitive to the pressure and it was excruciating. I’d rather go through a mouthful of route canal than do that again.
The scariest part is, like the retinal surgery, you are awake while they dismantle your eyeball. This doesn’t seem reasonable. Not even an anxiety med to calm my nerves. The surgeon shines a light into your eye that is hotter than the sun, and you can’t close your eye because it is prized open. All I could think of was the scene in “Clockwork Orange”. Then you go blind for a bid, then you can see again, and go blind again. Cataract surgery is a widespread procedure with only a 1 in 1000 chance of something going wrong, but given my experience of the last year, I’ve had a genuine fear that my eyesight is on the way out.
The good news is I now have bionic vision in one eye. I can drive at night without glasses, something I haven’t been able to do since I was 18. I also see colours differently, as though my new eye has a polarised lens: colours in the distance appear blue in my new eye and yellow in my old eye.
All this difference in perception has provided an anchor for my art practice. I have been awarded a DYCP Arts Council grant to explore this new way of seeing the world and translate it into new work in 2025.
I also have a show opening in December in collaboration with Will S Woods, where we convert the inside of a former clothes shop into a living, breathing, three-dimensional painting. Find out more here.
Short film I made during recovery that expressed the disorienting experieince of eye damage and recovery.