A remarkable exhibition of paintings by artists who have sight loss is being launched in Edinburgh today.
Organised by the Royal National Institute of Blind People Scotland, the exhibition will be open to the public at its headquarters at Hillside Crescent, just off London Road. Two members' art groups meet there on alternate weeks.
Fiona Powell, one of the artists whose work is on display, has been painting for four years. Fiona has retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive condition that affects the light-sensitive cells on the retina at the back of the eye. The sufferer can only see through a small patch in the centre of their field of vision.
"I initially trained in oils," she said, "but am now finding acrylics more versatile and exciting to mess around with. I like to try all types of paintings.
"It's difficult to get the right colour and to get the stroke down in the right place. In the past, I used to be able to look at what I wanted to paint but now I can't, so the difficulty is trying to see things in my head and paint from my memory and my imagination, something I didn't need to do before my sight loss.
"My only limitations is it has to be something I can deal with, something I can make look good and convey and that will make sense to others. Something I am not going to get too lost doing."
Graham Young has been an art tutor with the group for just over a year. " All the artist have different degrees of sight loss and some prefer brighter light and others don't," he said. "They are remarkably inventive at solving problems and usually require only the obvious help with location of materials. Sometimes masking tape and even plasticine are employed to direct paint strokes.
"For the main part they need just the usual encouragement that a tutor gives to student to express themselves. The variety of work reflects the individual personalities rather than anything to do with sight loss."
Press Release issued: 29 October 2009.